[Xastir] USGS DRG files no longer free..

[Curt Mills, WE7U]

On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, Tyler Allison wrote:

> http://kymartian.ky.gov/
>
> They have DEMS, shapefiles, and the various DMG files for all of Kentucky
> but Xastir is unable to map any of them, including the shapefiles. I've
> tried various conversion tools but nothing seems to do it. Granted I've
> only been playing with this kind of stuff for a couple days.
>
> I also tried grabbing some tif files from the Ohio branch and theirs are
> in the same format as the ones in kentucky. Im guessing Xastir just doesnt
> understand that format....or....somebody hasnt written up a 'howto get it
> to work' section of the README.MAPS. The documentation on the
> Ohio/Kentucky websites shows they are in the right format (NAD83, etc)

DEM's and DMG's though won't work with Xastir.  We don't have
support for those formats yet.  DRG's might work if they're standard
or near-standard format.  DOQ's (DOQQ's?) might work as well.

If you can provide more information on the problems you're having, I
might be able to help.  I'm not sure I'll have time to snag any maps
from there right now myself though.


> ps: It looks like nobody is carrying the USGS files in their original
> filename format so the fgd conversion tool in contribs isnt exactly useful
> unless you go buy the CD ;)

Between ImageMagick's moving target for integration and maps
appearing/disappearing/changing formats on the 'net, I suppose we
won't get bored.

Regarding Shapefiles...  They're not displaying at all?  You should
see _something_ in most cases.  You could try using the new dbfawk
stuff that Alan did (use "--with-dbfawk" at the ./configure stage),
you should be able to tweak the configs for those files so that they
display properly.

Note:  Some Shapefiles use the stateplane coordinate system instead
of lat/long.  In that case you have to convert to lat/long first.
See the Xastir docs for the process.

Some of the tools that come along with Shapelib can help you to see
what's in the files.  Things like shpdump, dbfdump, contrib/dbfinfo,
contrib/shpinfo.  I use those a lot when looking at new sources for
Shapefiles.

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