[Xastir] Address Search plus 2003 map data

[Curt, WE7U]

The latest development snapshot of Xastir (today's) and of course
the CVS version have a new feature:  "Find Address".  If you
download the appropriate state geocode files or the entire U.S.
file, you can then find a street address.  Xastir marks the address
and centers the map there.

Thanks to Derrick for adding that feature, using Daniel Egnor's
geocoder software that won the 2002 Google programming contest
(which he put under GPL license thank goodness!).

On some SAR missions we're told to report to a street address.  I
can do that easily now, much quicker than looking it up in the
Thomas Guide.  Since I only have Washington data loaded, I can just
type in a street and city and hit the "Locate Now!" button.  It
finds the address in probably 250ms or less, then centers the map
there.

Tiger 2003 data was made available in early March, and we use that
for our lookups.  It's possible to use the latest Tiger data for the
street maps themselves after a data conversion:  I have the 2003
Washington map data loaded.  We are still looking for someplace to
host the converted (to Shapefile) maps.

Do any commercial mapping programs have the 2003 street data yet?
I'm curious as to how long it takes for the commercial companies to
market products using it.  I'm not asking if they came out with
something labeled "2003" or "2004", but whether their maps are based
on the Tiger 2003 data.  I doubt they can turn out new products in a
month.  Tiger isn't the only map data that commercial products are
based on, but it's the most common.

--
Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"