Cartographic generalization research has focused almost exclusively in recent years on topographic mapping, and has thereby gained an incorrect reputation for having to do only with reference or positional data. The generalization research community needs to broaden its scope to include thematic cartography and geovisualization. Generalization is not new to these areas of cartography, and has in fact always been involved in thematic geographic visualization, despite rarely being acknowledged. We illustrate this involvement with several examples of famous, public-audience thematic maps, noting the generalization procedures involved in drawing each, both across their basemap and thematic layers. We also consider, for each map example we note, which generalization operators were crucial to the formation of the map’s thematic message. The many incremental gains made by the cartographic generalization research community while treating reference data can be brought to bear on thematic cartography in the same way they were used implicitly on the well-known thematic maps we highlight here as examples.

中文翻译：

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主题的变化：泛化在主题映射中的作用

近年来，制图综合研究几乎完全集中在地形图上，因此因仅与参考或位置数据有关而获得了不正确的声誉。概论研究界需要扩大其范围，以包括专题制图和地理可视化。概化对于这些制图学领域并不是什么新鲜事物，并且尽管很少有人承认，但事实上它始终涉及主题地理可视化。我们通过举几个著名的公共听众专题图的例子来说明这种参与，并指出在其底图和专题层上绘制每个专题图时涉及的概括过程。对于每个我们注意到的地图示例，我们还考虑哪些泛化运算符对于形成地图主题消息至关重要。