# Cartograph

> Turn a place into a map print, a GPS-art route, a fair meeting point or a true-size map. Cartograph turns your own OpenStreetMap extract into a print-ready city map poster (SVG, vector PDF, PNG), snaps a heart, star or self-drawn shape to its streets as a GPS-art route with GPX export, finds the fairest meeting point for up to twelve people, and moves countries across a Mercator world map to show their true size. Everything runs in your browser: no map, tile or routing server is contacted, and the OpenStreetMap attribution is on every export.

Cartograph (Map posters & route art) is a premium app of usefulweb.app (https://usefulweb.app/): a full program that runs in the browser. Its engine is deterministic and the same functions are exposed as tools, so an agent can compute exactly what the app shows.

## Use it
- Landing page: https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/
- Workspace (browser app): https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/app - open a project with https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/app#project=<base64url-encoded project JSON> or a template with https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/app#template=<id>
- Project file format (JSON Schema): https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/project.schema.json
- Tutorials: https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/tutorials
- JSON API: POST https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/api/v1/tools/<toolId>/calculate (catalog: https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/api/v1/tools)
- OpenAPI: https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/openapi.json
- MCP (Streamable HTTP): https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/mcp

## Engine tools
- [Cartograph Map Poster (SVG + PDF from OpenStreetMap)](https://cartographmapposter.usefulweb.app/): Turn an OpenStreetMap extract into a print-ready city map poster as SVG and vector PDF. Part of [Cartograph](https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/) (ownerApp: cartograph). API: POST https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/api/v1/tools/cartograph-map-poster/calculate · MCP tool `cartograph_map_poster`
- [Cartograph GPS Art Route Designer (shape → roads → GPX)](https://cartographrouteart.usefulweb.app/): Snap a heart, star or other shape to the streets of your OSM extract and get a GPX route. Part of [Cartograph](https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/) (ownerApp: cartograph). API: POST https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/api/v1/tools/cartograph-route-art/calculate · MCP tool `cartograph_route_art`
- [Cartograph Meet Halfway (fair meeting point for 2–12 people)](https://cartographmeethalfway.usefulweb.app/): Find the fairest meeting point for 2–12 people: geodesic midpoint, minimax and least total distance. Part of [Cartograph](https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/) (ownerApp: cartograph). API: POST https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/api/v1/tools/cartograph-meet-halfway/calculate · MCP tool `cartograph_meet_halfway`
- [Cartograph True Size of Countries (Mercator comparer)](https://cartographtruesize.usefulweb.app/): Move a country to another latitude and see its true size against the Mercator map. Part of [Cartograph](https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/) (ownerApp: cartograph). API: POST https://cartograph.usefulweb.app/api/v1/tools/cartograph-true-size/calculate · MCP tool `cartograph_true_size`

## Formats
- Import: OpenStreetMap XML (.osm), OpenStreetMap PBF (.osm.pbf, zlib), GeoJSON with OSM tags, GPX track (poster overlay), Cartograph project (.cartograph.json), Share link (#project=)
- Export: Poster SVG (true size), Poster PDF (vector), Poster PNG (150 or 300 dpi), Route GPX, Route and meeting points as GeoJSON, True-size map SVG and moved outline GeoJSON, Cartograph project (.cartograph.json), Share link

## Limits
- Cartograph does not search places or download map data: you need an OpenStreetMap extract of your area (only the Vaduz sample is built in).
- Posters draw roads, paths, railways, water, green areas and buildings, but no street names, labels, contour lines or hill shading; coastlines are drawn as lines, so the sea is not filled.
- GPS-art routes depend on the streets in the extract; access tags are taken as mapped, and closures, private grounds and safety are not known. Always check a route on site.
- Meeting points use straight-line distances; the road variant uses distance along roads, not travel time, traffic or public transport.
- True-size outlines are Natural Earth 1:110m: small countries and islands are missing, and coastlines are generalised.
- PDF titles in Chinese, Japanese or Korean are not embedded yet (use SVG or PNG for those).
- Large extracts (hundreds of thousands of features) make the poster preview slower on phones.