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OS MasterMap® style guidance

Ordnance Survey does not dictate the actual representation of OS MasterMap but does define some default styling definitions that are included in the OS MasterMap user guides. 

Most OS MasterMap compatible software use the default style loosely to apply an initial representation of OS MasterMap that can then be edited as appropriate for specific applications.  The default styles have been designed to be applicable for a large number of applications but Ordnance Survey encourages users and vendors to style OS MasterMap to meet their own requirements.

The images and information presented here are intended to support people wishing to draw OS MasterMap data using the default styles defined in the user guide .

Sample images

The following images are representations that have been produced in accordance with the user guide. These images provide a reference that OS MasterMap viewers can be compared against. Click on the images to view the same image at a higher resolution.

Examples in SVG

Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG) provides a closer inspection of the style application. SVG is an XML format for graphics defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). To view SVG you will need SVG enabled software. A list of resources is on the JISC Digital Media website.

The SVG provided here has only been tested with the Adobe® SVG Viewer. To move around the SVG using the plug-in, remember the following:

  • Zoom in - CtrL, left mouse click and drag.
  • Zoom out - CtrL, SHIFT and left mouse click.
  • Pan - ALT, left mouse click and drag

Basingstoke

colour polygon style.svg (2.34Mb) | colour polygon syle.svgz (440 Kb)

colour line style.svg (1.21 Mb) | colour line style.svgz (219 Kb)

 

Styles and symbols

Here are the recommended styles and symbols for OS MasterMap encoded in SVG. This encoding provides examples of all styles defined in the user guide. To view the SVG, you must have an SVG-enabled browser or SVG viewer.  The following graphic is representative of how the symbols appear within the SVG; see the SVG file for the entire symbol set.


 
OSMasterMapStyles.svg (106Kb)| OSMasterMapStyles.svgz (13 Kb)

Transforming GML using XSLT


These styles are also supplied as an XML Style sheet (XSLT, or eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations), which includes the style descriptions from the OS MasterMap user guide in an XML format, for all OS MasterMap layers (excluding Imagery layer). 

For those interested in using XSLT with OS MasterMap an example is provided below that applies the OS MasterMap style guidelines to the independent polygon GML data to produce SVG. Both files below are required and should be used in the same directory as the data being converted.

gml2svg.xsl

OSMasterMapStyles.xml

There are two different styles defined within 'OSMasterMapStyles.xml', a polygon based style and a line only style.  To choose which style to translate OS MasterMap to edit the 'OSMasterMapStyles.xml file'.  The style is specified by the defaultStyle attribute which should be set to "ColourPolygonStyles" or "ColourLineStyles" as below:

http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" defaultStyle="ColourPolygonStyles">

OR

http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" defaultStyle="ColourLineStyles">

Note that both styles will work with data from all layers of OS MasterMap (excluding the Imagery Layer).

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For general enquiries, complaints, feedback or suggestions, email: customerservices@ordnancesurvey.co.uk or call us on 08456 05 05 05