[Xastir] Prefered map format?

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

First let me say some general stuff:  The Shapefile hard-coded
defaults were selected by me as I played with Shapefiles.  They
worked for me, but I didn't get any input from others as to what
worked/didn't work for them.

Now that we have the dbfawk code, users can get in there and either
create their own dbfawk files to go with specific types of maps, or
suggest changes to the default dbfawk files so that they can be made
more useful for people who don't want to go to the extra trouble of
messing with these files.


On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Nate Bargmann wrote:

> What I liked about the Tiger server images were
> the nice way that federal highways are colored and state and secondary
> roads were black or gray.  In my experiments with the ERSI maps did
> result in the federal highways being a heavier line, but still black.

I _think_ the dbfawk stuff can change that for you.  I'm sure Alan
could verify/disprove that.


> I like the server maps that colored in incorporated town boundaries
> while the ERSI file only had a colored line drawn, but no fill even
> though I had the Enable color fill option activated.  I liked the river
> and lake polygons being filled.

Again, I think and appopriate dbfawk file could fix that.


> I like also that as one zoomed out the graphic didn't seem to become a
> jumbled mess.  I have levels turned on, but the highway names and all
> the roads were visible rather than being ignored.

Not sure about the levels/labels thing, whether dbfawk can handle
that.


> I also didn't find
> the magic file that contained town names nor highway numbers.

They're in the .dbf file that goes with each shapefile.  That's
where all the attribute information goes.


> I did
> find that the street names in a town did disappear beyond a certain
> zoom-out.

That's hard-coded, based on zoom-level, and based on what looked
good to me with just a few examples of files while I was writing it.


> Perhaps I can send a screenshot of what I'm getting.
>
> As I learn more I hope to contribute some as that is how a better
> program develops.  I think the real problems are few, but a street map
> display that exceeds the screenshots of WinAPRS would be too cool.

Using *.map files?  I think we already do better than they,
particularly with the rotated labels.

It sounds like the way to proceed would be for you to run the latest
CVS Xastir, configure with "--with-dbfawk", get it all running, then
suggest changes to the list (or direct to Alan?).  Between tweaking
the code and tweaking/adding dbfawk files, we should be able to fix
you up.

-- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math!"
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates!" -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"