[Xastir-Dev] [Fwd: First attempt at using dbfawk fails miserably]

[Alan Crosswell]

None of these sound like dbfawk issues at all.  Other than the missing 
.dbfawk file for tgr*plc files.  If you send me a sample of a plc file 
I'll cobble together a dbfawk for it.  Missing dbfawk signatures will 
likely prevent that map from displaying.

That patch is something I'm not aware of and sounds like a shapelib 
version issue and/or OS difference.  What OS is this?
/a


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: First attempt at using dbfawk fails miserably
Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 01:02:14 -0800
From: Jack Twilley <jmt at twilley.org>
To: Alan Crosswell <alan at columbia.edu>

I'm sending this to you and not to the list because it comes across a
little harsher than intended.  I have nothing against you and nothing
against dbfawk, it's just that I found this experience to be
frustrating and I don't want my email to be written off as a flame
when it's not.

I experienced a violation of the Rule of Least Surprise while playing
with dbfawk.  I enabled it with --with-dbfawk and Tom Russo's patch
(which I'll commit as soon as I know it works) and started up xastir.

This message came across my xterm:
No DBFAWK signature for area/place/tgr06013plc00.shp!

I guess there's no default signature already written, but that
shouldn't hurt anything, right?

When xastir came up, it didn't look right.  The first thing I noticed
was that the point shapefiles were displayed.  That's wrong, because
they're not enabled in the map chooser.  Maps that are not enabled
with "auto maps" should not be displayed unless explicitly requested,
right?

The next thing I noticed was that the maps were displayed out of their
usual order.  The order appeared to be alphabetical as if layers were
being completely ignored.  That's wrong, too.  There's nothing in
README.MAPS about this kind of side effect.

The software wouldn't compile without the patch.  I've attached it to
this message so you can eyeball it and see if there's anything in the
patch that could have caused the behavior I saw.

Jack.
-- 
Jack Twilley
jmt at twilley dot org
http colon slash slash www dot twilley dot org slash tilde jmt slash