rk.map.globalities: World & Regional Maps for RKWard

rk.map.globalities is a specialized spatial data downloader for RKWard. While its sibling plugin (rk.map.localities) focuses on high-resolution municipalities, this plugin focuses on the Big Picture: Continents, Subregions, and the World.

It leverages rnaturalearth to fetch country boundaries and includes a built-in Projection Engine to ensure your global maps look professional (e.g., Robinson or Winkel Tripel) rather than distorted.

🚀 Features

1. Macro-Region Filtering

Easily download specific parts of the world without needing to know complex ISO codes.

• The Americas: One-click download for the "New World" (North + South America + Caribbean).
• Afro-Eurasia: Instantly get the "Old World" (Africa + Europe + Asia).
• Subregions: Specific filters for The Middle East (West Asia), Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and more.

2. Aesthetic Projections (Built-in)

Raw spatial data usually comes in "Plate Carrée" (Lat/Lon), which makes the world look stretched at the poles. This plugin fixes that automatically.

• Robinson: The classic "National Geographic" look.
• Winkel Tripel: Low distortion, standard for world atlases.
• Mollweide: Equal-area projection (great for density comparisons).
• Mercator: Web-standard (though not recommended for global thematic maps).

3. Thematic Map Best Practices

• Antarctica Toggle: Automatically exclude Antarctica with a single checkbox. This is a best practice for choropleth maps (heatmaps) to save vertical space and focus on human geography.
• European Cropping (New in v0.0.3): Check "Strict European Bounds" to automatically crop the vast Asian expanse of Russia at the Ural Mountains and remove Iceland, creating a much tighter, more aesthetically pleasing map for European analysis.
• Resolution Control: Choose between Low (1:110m) for fast previews or Medium (1:50m) for publication-quality borders.

📦 Installation

With remotes (Recommended)

You can install this plugin directly from the repository using the remotes package in R.

local({
## Preparar
require(remotes)
## Computar
  install_github(
    repo="AlfCano/rk.map.globalities"
  )
## Imprimir el resultado
rk.header ("Resultados de Instalar desde git")
})

System Requirements: This plugin relies on the sf package. On Linux (Ubuntu/Debian), ensure you have the system libraries installed: sudo apt-get install libudunits2-dev libgdal-dev libgeos-dev

🌍 Internationalization

The interface is fully localized to match your RKWard language settings:

• 🇺🇸 English (Default)
• 🇪🇸 Spanish (es)
• 🇫🇷 French (fr)
• 🇩🇪 German (de)
• 🇧🇷 Portuguese (Brazil) (pt_BR)

💻 Usage

Once installed, find the tool under:

Plots -> Maps -> Download -> Download Global/Regional Maps

1. Select Region: Choose "Whole World", "Americas", "Europe", etc.
2. Map Resolution: "Medium" is recommended for most uses.
3. Options: Check "Exclude Antarctica" for a cleaner look, or "Strict European Bounds" if mapping Europe.
4. Projection: Select "Robinson" (or your preferred style).
5. Save Object: Name your map object (default: world_map).

🎓 Quick Start Example

Scenario: Creating a "Digital Access" Choropleth map of the World in Robinson projection.

Step 1: Download and Project

1. Open Download -> Download Global/Regional Maps.
2. Region: Whole World.
3. Exclude Antarctica: Checked.
4. Projection: Robinson (Standard World Map).
5. Save As: world_robinson.
6. Click Submit.

Step 2: Create Dummy Data

Since we need data to plot, run this in the R Console to generate fake values for the countries we just downloaded.

# Extract names from the downloaded map to ensure matching
if (exists("world_robinson")) {
  set.seed(2025)
  world_fake_data <- data.frame(
    Country_Name = world_robinson$name,
    Digital_Index = runif(nrow(world_robinson), min = 5, max = 98)
  )
}

Step 3: Visualize (Using rk.rnaturalearth)

This plugin pairs perfectly with the Plot Continuous Map tool from rk.rnaturalearth.

1. Open Plots -> Maps -> Plot Continuous Map.

2. Map Object: world_robinson.

3. Map Id Column: name.

4. Data Frame: world_fake_data.

5. Region Name Column: Country_Name.

6. Value Column: Digital_Index.

7. Click Submit.

   

🛠️ Dependencies

• rnaturalearth (Data source)
• sf (Spatial transformation)
• dplyr (Filtering)

✍️ Author & License

• Author: Alfonso Cano (alfonso.cano@correo.buap.mx)
• Assisted by: Gemini, a large language model from Google.
• License: GPL (>= 3)

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