As recently as 3 years ago, these were the dominant cartography-software workflows, as garnered from a survey of CartoTalk posts:
With the exception of a few of these products, many cartographers still use one or more of those paths on a daily basis.
Might the following compilation of the most-tagged terms on GIS Stack Exchange give us a glimpse into what the most common workflows of the future will be?* The number of references is listed on the right.
* Two caveats: (1) QGIS uses stackexchange as their primary forum for questions and answers (but that doesn’t preclude its applicability). (2) There are quite a few new tools out there that people are having success with that aren’t in the top tags.
#1 by LeighH on April 23, 2013 - 4:52 pm
Another caveat – GIS Stack Exchange doesn’t really deal with Inkscape, Illustrator, Photoshop, or Freehand (or Gimp), and those tools are still important to some workflows.
#2 by Lyzi Diamond on April 23, 2013 - 4:54 pm
I know that I only use GIS Stack Exchange when I have a question or I don’t understand something. I imagine other people use it the same way. Wouldn’t this list, then, be more of a list of common applications that give the most issues or problems in GIS workflows?
#3 by Gretchen on April 23, 2013 - 5:52 pm
@LeighH: True.
@Lyzi: That may be, but it also could be that more questions are asked of software that is used more. I’m leaning toward the latter.