[Xastir] Maps for Xastir

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Jacob Tennant wrote:

> I have read the online info for maps but still have to ask if xastir can use
> any of the map software commercially available? Street Atlas? Precision
> Mapping? or any others?

Why is it that people always think they have to spend money to get
maps?  Do you know where the map info comes from that goes into the
commercial maps?  It comes from our very own government!  You can
get complete street maps and topo maps for free, so why is it that
you want to pay for them?

We use US Census Tiger/Line files that have been converted to
Shapefile format for our street maps, but can also use pocketAPRS,
WinAPRS/MacAPRS/dosAPRS maps, any image you can scan in if you have
ImageMagick linked in, and USGS geoTIFF topo maps if you have libproj
and libgeotiff linked in.

Look in the README.1ST file for a few ideas on where to get maps.

You can also use Ui-View maps.  We have a converter script with
Xastir that can create the .geo files from .inf files that go
with map image files.

We also have mapfgd.pl, which can create the .fgd files to go with
certain types of USGS geotiff topo maps, in case you can fine the
geotiff's but not the .fgd's to go with them.


> Just looking for really good maps as I am active in SAR tracking as well as
> EOSS chasing and a balloon festival chase team.

I'm in SAR as well.  That's why the seamless USGS topo map portions
for Xastir were written.  That's also why the GPSMan integration was
done, although that hasn't been tested or written up yet for Cygwin.
It works great on Linux though.

Please let us know if you have more questions about maps.

Oh yea, there's a script that one of our developers wrote that works
with TOPO! maps, creating the .geo files that Xastir needs in order
to use the map tiles.  It hasn't been released yet, but just letting
you know that it exists.

Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
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