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Moon Maps for Marble

So you want to add moon maps to Marble. This is great since we want to see lots of maps in Marble where the user can browse through space and time. There are lots of maps that are under the public domain.

You'll find a lot of maps at sites like:

Before start creating a map, check if its also created at Marble Maps. Normally these type of maps or rather images, are uploaded in several projections, to create our map, we need a simple cylindrical version. If the map that you want it's not available in a simple cylindrical version, you can follow the steps that are explained at Historical Maps

Downloading textures

As an example we start off with this nice map of Iapetus from the Cassini and Voyager missions:

- Mapaplanet: Iapetus

This map has a resolution of 2880 × 5760 which gives us good details, and marble can create the tiles automatically, because it's under 60000x120000.

We create a directory "Iapetus" that it's the nome of the planet/moon, and inside it, another one "iapetus", that it's the name of the maptheme. We need to change the name of the file downloaded and save it as "iapetus.jpg" at /Iapetus/iapetus.

Create a dgml file

Next you have a template for creating the dgml file. Copy it inside a plain text editor and save it as a .dgml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<dgml xmlns="http://edu.kde.org/marble/dgml/2.0">
    <document>
        <head>
            <name>$YourMapName</name>
            <target>$YourMapTarget</target>
            <theme>$YourMapTheme</theme>
            <icon pixmap="$PreviewImage"/>
            <visible>true</visible>
            <description><![CDATA[$YourMapDescription]]></description>
            <zoom>
                <discrete> true </discrete>
                <minimum> 900 </minimum>
                <maximum> 3500 </maximum>
            </zoom>
        </head>

        <map bgcolor="#000000">
            <canvas/>
            <target/>
            <!-- insert layers here -->
        </map>

        <settings>
            <property name="coordinate-grid">
                <value>true</value>
                <available>true</available>
            </property>
            <property name="overviewmap">
                <value>true</value>
                <available>true</available>
            </property>
            <property name="compass">
                <value>true</value>
                <available>true</available>
            </property>
            <property name="scalebar">
                <value>true</value>
                <available>true</available>
            </property>
        </settings>

        <legend>
            <section name="coordinate-grid" checkable="true" connect="coordinate-grid" spacing="12">
                <heading>Coordinate Grid</heading>
            </section>
        </legend>
    </document>
</dgml>

Now we need to change some things in this template, like the name of the map, what moon is, etc. First, we change the $YourMapTheme by the name of the second directory that you create in this case "iapetus" Second, we need to replace $YourMapTarget by