JumpMap and Credits tweaks

Three slight tweaks:

• Further cleaned up coordinates documentation in the API docs
• While doing that, added support for sector/hex and sx/sy/hx/hy in addition to x/y for specifying the location for the Credits API.
• After bludgeoning at GDI+ with a pointy stick, made the JumpMap API spit out transparent PNGs, so the bit outside the border will blend more appropriately with hosting sites. Sorry, transparent GIFs are too much work.

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Coordinate Systems

Thanks to API users, I realized my documentation of coordinate systems used by the site and various APIs was horrible.

Please take a peek at the new Coordinate Systems documentation and let me know if it makes any more sense. Ω

The Equinox is Nigh: Candy and Eggs

Wayne Peters dropped me an updated background image for the Candy Style rendering. The old image was a JPEG, and since you always see it zoomed in the artifacts were noticeable. The new image is a PNG and so no more artifacts. The tiles themselves are still JPEG, but you don't notice the compression. (example)

Also... it's that time of the year again. My wife has broken out her pysanky-making tools again and chickens are looking nervous. While decorating some she glanced at some of my Traveller maps laying about (I finally picked up copies of the Judges Guild sectors), and said "you should do a map egg - you design it, I'll do all the work". So here it is:

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Border Generation

I've written up a paper and demo page on the updates to the allygen algorithms by J. Greely I used to generate most of the borders that weren't previously documented.

• Improved Automatic Border Generation for TRAVELLER Sectors
  
• Demo Page

The modified allygen code I used isn't terribly pretty, but is available on request. I'd like to clean it up before publishing it. The demo version is reimplemented in JavaScript and is much easier to read. I encourage you to check out the source.

Would a full blown web app that lets you copy/paste .SEC files and interactively generate border descriptors (useful for sec2pdf ) be useful for anyone? Ω