guidelines for authors of cave surveys

[David Gibson]

A while ago, I think it was Graham Mullan in this mailing list or over
in Survex, who was asking about graphics formats, and I made the comment
that sending a magazine editor a small compressed JPG file for a cave
survey, as some people apparently do, and expecting them to be able to
reproduce it at a high quality was .. ummm. [sentence too long,
truncated].

Anyway, I now find myself in the position of being a caving magazine
editor <http://bcra.org.uk/pub/speleology/> and I wondered if the
readers of this mailing list would like to get together to draw up a
list of 'guidelines for authors of cave surveys'?  Not just for me - it
will be useful generally.

To an extent, the problem is that I need to find the right software to
read the files that people send me. But I can also offer tips such as
"vector formats are infinitely preferable to bit-maps" and tell you the
resolution I need. For line drawings it has to be a lot higher than
photos, for example.

I have put some draft notes at 
http://bcra.org.uk/pub/speleology/format.html>, 
scroll to the section on 'Graphical Content'.

Ive just noticed that I appear to have mentioned a specific drawing
package there - so before certain individuals here complain to me, (the
usual suspects :-) please note that I meant to say 'for example,
Coreldraw'.
-- 
David Gibson