Multilingual mapping based on XML-SVG

With the development of geo-informatics, the demands of web mapping services are increasing worldwide. However, these services need to be more accessible and personalized including the ability to display multiple languages in a single interface or a geo-spatial Web Site in terms of 'on-the-fly' map representation and decoration for international visitors. This paper is proposed a multilingual-based approach which a SVG based map is the primary source for preparing a multilingual Web map. According to the basic concepts or principles of map decoration, the paper gives not only an ontological model of map representation and decoration but also indicates clearly that the general issues and main theories and methods of multilingual text on Web mapping. Then, it combines different techniques to decorate the Web map such as SVG specification, four color theorem and line simplification. In order to handle the concurrent hierarchies in geometric context of the map, a geometric view of the solution, a segment tree structure and range-query structure were adapted to solve the issues of text kerning along the curve and multilingual text overlap on one point or coordinate in particular multidimensional or multi-element ones. By the experiments, this approach can be used to implement the spatial query like accessing spatial geometric elements and attributes and it can also be creating maps on-the-fly for multilingual map generalization and integration. Finally, these approaches were implemented and supported to create a software platform called 'Spatial Information Service System' which focus on the integration with multiply sources of spatial information as a disseminating and serving platform for visualizing functionality and generating maps on-the-fly in the context of web mapping applications.