Glossary

GIS

Acronym for Geographic Information System: a very general term for indicating either a geo-relational database software, or the information stored in the geo-database, as well as the whole information system (data + software + hardware).

Imagemap

In HTML, and imagemap is a graphic vector representation of clickable areas on an image, and allows to associate hyperlinks to portions of an image. Supported shapes are the circle, the polygon and the rectangle. In JS-GIS, an imagemap is a tile subdivision of a single layer into JavaScript/HTML imagemap definitions, so that a single tile can be loaded in a map and make it interactive. A JS-GIS imagemap allows the user to query a map by clicking on it

JS-GIS

Acronym for JavaScript Static Geographic Information System. Client side lightweight technology, based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, for viewing statically generated map data on a web browser.

Publisher

A tool running on a particular GIS platform which can export maps into JS-GIS format.

Theme

In JS-GIS, a theme represents a (usually) multi-layer map. User cannot customize the map appearence, but can change the current visible theme without changing map zoom and location. Themes are obtained exporting a map from the GIS system and cutting it in tiles according to the related zoom levels.

Tile

A rectangular (generally square) portion of a map of such a size it can be easily viewed on a web page. Tiles allow to split large maps into easily manageable chunks. They are indexed by row and column number and georeferenced, so that the JS-GIS engine can locate a tile containing a point given the geographic coordinates of that point.