[Xastir] Mapping software enquiry

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Tue, 2 Dec 2003, Phil wrote:

> My Garmin Etrex GPS receiver arrived in the mail earlier today and to test it
> I walked around the local area covering just under 8 km. Now that I have
> downloaded and saved the track data I'm wondering how I might display it on a
> map.
>
> Xastir doesn't look like it can do the job, and even if it could I don't know
> where I might get suitable maps. I could possibly create an application
> myself based on scanned local maps, however such an application might already
> exist.
>
> Does anyone know of such an application? I know that such applications exist
> for Microsoft's Windows but I don't know if they will run under wine, even if
> I could afford the price.

Perish the thought.

You want to suck in the track data with Xastir and use it as a map?
Xastir can do that!

Make sure you're running a somewhat recent Xastir development
snapshot or the CVS version.

Follow the instructions in the INSTALL file for compiling in GPSmap
support.

After that, you'll have some new buttons on your interfaces menu.
Use the "Interface->Fetch GPS Track" menu option to snag the track
directly into Xastir from the GPS.  At that point you'll have a
Shapefile-format map in your ~/.xastir/tracklogs directory.  Here's
an example set of filenames that I downloaded:

    Tue_Sep_23_12:43:02_PDT_2003_PLS_APRS_Trail_Red.shx
    Tue_Sep_23_12:43:02_PDT_2003_PLS_APRS_Trail_Red.shp
    Tue_Sep_23_12:43:02_PDT_2003_PLS_APRS_Trail_Red.dbf

If you now copy them to your maps directory and reindex maps, you'll
see that map in the Map Chooser.

You could also create a symlink from your maps directory down to the
directory I called out above and reindex.  In fact if you do that
the maps might get auto-reindexed and auto-selected for you, and
appear magically on your Xastir screen at the completion of the
download.

-- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
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