Displacement in vector- and raster-mode graphics

Either by examining features in isolation or by effecting only a small reduction in scale, attempts to automate cartographic generalization have largely ignored the need to displace line symbols. The few existing attempts to automate displacement suggest that a flexible algorithm able to cope with realistic cartographic applications must treat displacement in two phases: detection and adjustment. A redundant data structure is appropriate, with raster data to detect regions of the map requiring displacement and vector data to shift the features apart. -from Author