[Xastir] Prefered map format?

[Alan Crosswell]

The pretty maps are all based on commercial products such as UIview's 
use of Precision Mapping maps.  You can find some nice DRG rasters which 
are scans of USGS paper maps.  Otherwise you can play around with 
shapefile maps, but they are not so pretty as say those made by 
Precision Mapping.  It's hard work to get automatically rendered maps to 
look nice.  Of course, Xastir is freeware and uses free map data so I 
feel a little better about the maps not being so pretty.  I believe 
there's some work going on with respect to caching of downloaded maps. 
I too want my Xastir station to work "unplugged."

If you use shapefile maps and "configure --with-dbfawk" you can do some 
customization of how the shapefile maps look, but they still look 
amateurish (that's a good thing, right? :-)  See README.MAPS.  Read it 
about 6 times and it will start to sink in;  There's a lot of dense 
information in there.

73 de Alan N2YGK


Nate Bargmann wrote:
> Hello all.
> 
> This is probably an FAQ, but I've been driving myself nuts trying to
> find a map format that isn't ugly as all get out.
> 
> I downloaded some palmmap files and they are okay, but not impressive.
> 
> I've tried various Tiger line format files and totally found things
> lacking.  Far too many files to deal with and no real guidance that I
> coupld find to use them effectively.  End result, still ugly.
> 
> The dynamic Tiger displays are beatiful!  I want these all the time, but I
> don't have any kind of mobile Internet access out here in the sticks and
> apparently there is no way to cache the data that is downloaded to disk
> so the image files could be rebuilt later.  If only the Tiger files I
> downloaded could look so good with colored roads and nicely defined
> urban areas.
> 
> I thought I'd try MacAPRS files, but had no luck trying to decompress
> them as Xastir never showed a map on the screen.
> 
> I am frustrated, to say the least, and should probably go back to doing
> something else, but I'd really like a map display worthy of 2003 instead
> of a few lines and an ugly motif-gray background.  :-\
> 
> Thanks for letting me vent a bit.  I really want to use Xastir, but I've
> wasted nearly a day trying to find a map that meets my taste.  I find
> I really need a continuous 'Net connection to make it work.  Bummer.
> 
> Does anyone have a really nice map format that they use from the hard
> drive?  BTW, I'm using Xastir 1.2.0 on Debian Testing.
> 
> 73, de Nate >>
>