Scale and--

[Alex]

The books about the history of cartography, and the intro geography texbooks I mentioned would be my suggestion. Like I said, I didn't learn it this way so I don't have much advice.

I haven't found anything for the history of cartography, but I have found "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geography". Hopefully that will be a good choice. xD

They are just SVG images. You can load them into any editor that supports SVG. They do have some extensions that should give you a basic layer structure to build from if you load it in Inkscape, which is the editor I use. Both are intended for full globes so either would be a good starting point. The Mercator template is probably easier to work with. I'm working on a Ruby program to generate graticules for the Equidistant Conic projection suitable for continents.

Oh, so there are no special rules to follow? Like placement? I'll try drawing my world on it now, was messing with the files. GIMP loads them (good that I did not encounter some errors -- my GIMP acts weird since its reinstall), tried Inkscape but it won't install for me. >.>

Ruby program? As in the Ruby programming language? If so, I have heard of it, and seen it in action. I have not learned it, of course. I give you, sir (?), a super thumbs up for that and giant "good luck".

Alex~

[Hai-Etlik]

Oh, so there are no special rules to follow? Like placement?

Well they both distort size. On Mercator, things get bigger toward the poles, and on Stereogrpahic they get bigger the further you get from the centre. Also mercator doesn't go all the way to the poles and it distorts them all the way to infinity.

There are of course particular ways that continents form and the shapes and relationships they take on, but that's Geology which is a completely different field. What we've been talking about is Geodesy. A Magical Society: Guide to Mapping (which you evidently already have) is also good and should serve you well. If you want more detail, a book on Physical Geography. I snagged a first year Pys Geo textbook at a used bookstore and it's quite helpful.

Dealing with the shape of the world in a satisfactory way involves some alien concepts, but they are fairly simple once you get them and it's not too much work to implement it to a reasonable degree of accuracy (for fantasy mapping). Once you get to physical geography, you are looking at a whole new situation. There's always another factor to consider and another detail tempting you to incorporate it. It's tempting to map out the tectonics in more detail, to refine the climate model to incorporate some additional influence like seasonal variation. This can be a bottomless pit of study, research, and effort if you aren't careful. Just be ready to say "that's good enough". Chances are, few people will notice if your monsoons are off course or if the arc of a subduction zone is wrong. Remember that this is just one end of a spectrum, and at the other end are people with PhDs and research fellowships developing massively complex and detailed models of specific real world fault systems or 1 square km sections of rainforest.