I’m on the quest for my own fully fledged, wall-sized map of the world - completely done in GMT.
Of course I call more than one commercially available map of the world my own – but on every map there are details that bother me. So, equipped with the mighty sword that is GMT, I set out to create my perfect map of the world … aaaand got stuck at the first step, selecting the “best” projection for a rectangular map of the world.
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Cylindrical projections aren’t an option. Mercator is out. Way too much distortion.
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I have a nice map of the world that uses the van der Grinten projection (
-Jv
-JV
) with a nice detail:
It expands beyond -160/-160° (map centered on 020°E) in the four corners. Alaska is there in the upper left and right corner. Very nice when you are looking at details at the borders of the map and you need to cross to the other side. Orienting yourself on the map gets quite a bit easier. -
Currently I would prefer the Winkel Tripel projection (
-Jr
-JR
) but with that nice “wrapping around” of my map as seen above. Currently that isn’t possible with GMT as the projections don’t “wrap around”.-R
doesn’t allow (to my knowledge) domains larger than 360° longitude.
Do you have a good idea for the “best” projection for a rectangular world map?