Guide rules for electronic atlas project in China

Electronic atlas project (E-atlas project) plays an important role in the procedure of popularizing maps and is diversifying its application widely in China. Practice for E-atlas projects is a basic approach for achieving public accessibility to national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) and meets people's inherent needs of updated maps. This paper provides a description and assessment of an integration of E-atlas projects, analyzes current progress and characters of E-atlas project, summarizes basic guide rules, and provides solution and interpretation. It depicts a conceptual framework of an authoring toolkit that is driven by application of E-atlas on the basis of successful instances. The toolkit which improves interactive interface, decreases operational difficulties is developed in Visual C++ and used widely in China.