Explore the map

Goal: read the map of a built project: find a person, see what they work on and who is closest, follow the links to the other screens, compare two people or organisations, export distances and save a view as an image.

You need: a built project (the demo project of Your first map, with the demo project will do).

Read the picture

Each point is a person, in the colour of the theme that weighs most in their texts; two people are close when they use the same keywords in the same proportions. Under Show, add the keywords, the organisations (at the average place of their mapped people), the texts, the projected people and the time windows (a person’s texts over a few years, each a point). Filters come from your lists’ own columns, and Period keeps the texts of some years only. Drag to move, the wheel or + and − to zoom, 0 to fit.

Once the texts are shown, Texts: all · of the focus · with the network chooses which: every text (a sample of a very large corpus), or only those of what is selected (a person’s texts, all of them however large the corpus; an organisation’s members’; a theme’s, the texts with most of their keywords in it; a keyword’s, the texts that use it), and with the network the texts of the co-authors the network’s rings reach as well. With nothing selected, every text is drawn.

The themes beside the map show each theme’s share of all use: select one to light its people and keywords.

Trajectory, in the same panel, joins the time windows of the selected person in time order, the first and last years named: where their work went over the years. It is off until you turn it on, and stays on (in the page’s address) while you select other people.

Map versions

Map versions, at the top of the map, lists how the map was drawn: each version’s method, seed, note, and whether it is flat (2D) or in space (3D). The pinned version is the reference: every build of the map draws it, and the distances, the exports and the themes’ places come from it.

• Nearest kept says how faithful a built version is: how many of each person’s nearest people stay nearest on the map (its trustworthiness; 100 % would keep them all).

• Build it too has a version drawn at each build of the map, beside the pinned one (which is always built), so the atlas and the offline site can show it. The map is built again to draw the change: Build the map now, or at the next build. A built version has Show.

• Try another layout draws a new version: another method, another seed, Flat (2D) or In space (3D) (a UMAP layout only), then Pin it and redraw the map or Build it beside the pinned one (the default for a map in space, which leaves the reference flat).

A map in three dimensions

A map version can be laid out in three dimensions (Map versions, In space (3D)): its places keep more of the distances than a flat map can, and groups that overlap on the flat map may stand apart.

Everything of the flat map works on it: the layers, the selection and what it lights, the co-authors’ lines, the names, Find, the filters, the colours, Save the view (the picture as it is turned on screen).

• Drag to turn it; Shift and drag (or drag with the right button) to move it; the wheel zooms toward the pointer; a click selects the point in front.

• With the keyboard: the arrows turn, Shift and the arrows move, + and − zoom, 0 fits, the space bar starts or stops Turn (turning on its own).

• Front shows it from the front, as a flat map: x to the right, y up.

• The World view stays flat; so do base maps, shown on a flat version only, and the layout preview of Tune the map (a 3D layout is built, then viewed).

When several versions are built, Layout at the top of the map shows one or another (flat or 3D), each named by its version, method and note; the page’s address keeps the choice.

Find and follow

• Find on the map (type a name, choose with the arrows and Enter) selects a person, an organisation, a keyword or a theme; so does a click.

• The panel shows what is selected: a person’s organisations, themes and most used keywords; an organisation’s people; a keyword’s users; a theme’s keywords and the people who weigh most on it.

• Its links open the same thing elsewhere: Open in People (the person’s sheet and texts), Open in Organisations, Open in the lexicon, Open in Themes. Those screens lead back to the map, centred on it.

• The address of the page keeps the selection: copy it to come back to the same view.

Co-authors

A person’s co-authors in the project can be drawn as lines on the map, from the person to each co-author, and are listed in the panel with the texts they wrote together. Collaborators collected for the project but not on the map (people in the context role) are listed faintly, since they have no place to draw. An option adds the second circle: the co-authors of the co-authors.

Compare and measure

• Compare with… puts another person or organisation beside the selection: their similarity, from 0 (nothing in common) to 1 (the same), the keywords both use, the themes both weigh on, the texts they wrote together. It is measured from their texts, not on the picture: quote this number, not a distance on the map.

• The Distances pane (beside Atlas, at the top of the screen) ranks everyone by how alike they are to a person or an organisation, lists who talks the same without working together (and the reverse) and draws matrices ordered by theme, by any of the four similarities below (the first and the last measured in your browser, the others by the app); the shared site has the same page with the two the browser measures (see Share a site).

• Export distances writes, as a file, the nearest of each person or organisation, every pair (the full matrix), or the vectors, with names or pseudonyms. The file is listed on the Share screen when it is written, with a small .meta.json beside it that says how it was measured; a very large matrix asks first.

Tune the map › Distances chooses the similarity that Compare puts first, that the exports write and that the nearest follow (no rebuild needed):

similarity	what it means
Meaning in the map’s space (the default)	the cosine of their vectors in the space the map is drawn from: what its reduction keeps of their whole vocabulary, so that keywords used together count as close
Shared vocabulary	the cosine of their keyword profiles (each keyword’s share of their use): the same keywords in the same proportions, word for word
Keywords in common	the share of their keywords that both use, among those either uses (the Jaccard index), however much each uses them
Shared themes	how much of their themes they share: the sum, over the top-level themes, of the smaller of their two shares

The first sees two people who write about the same things in different words as close; the second and third need the same words; the last only looks at the themes, so it ignores what distinguishes two people within a theme.

Save a view

Save the view downloads what is on screen as a PNG or SVG image, with or without its legend, for a slide or a report. The map can also go full screen, and its side columns fold away. Map versions keeps the map stable: the pinned version is the one every build redraws; try another layout there without losing the one people know.

If something is not right

• Someone is missing: only mapped people with enough texts are on the map; projected people appear when Projected people is shown. A person’s sheet (Open in People) says why they have no texts.

• The map is out of date: a note says so after your changes; build the map again from the overview.

More: What cartolex does, in its own words (what the map shows), Share a site.