One approach to increasing the area coverage of small-screen map displays is to exploit the
‘elasticity’ of the electronic display through use of non-linear scaling. Although resolution is
necessarily lost in areas of smaller scale, bitmap images lose important information when re-
scaled. This can render features unrecognisable and text unreadable. Vector maps are more
tolerant to non-linear scaling because critical position information found in vertices of lines
is distorted without being lost. Examples of non-linear scaling are presented to demonstrate
the effect on bitmap and vector images. Ongoing research examining the user performance
benefits of non-linear displays is also described.
