[Xastir] manually generated tiger map problem

[Curt, WE7U]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Jason Winningham wrote:

> I would prefer vector maps, if I could find them. The only vector maps
> I've been able to locate so far are: some shapefiles from tiger data
> that have no color and no street names, the old DOS APRS maps (both
> have too little detail to be useful), and the complete tiger dump by
> county from the ESRI web site (again all black, and the street names
> are all you can see if you're viewing more than a few hundred yards
> square on the screen).

The answer is Shapelib, "./configure --with-dbfawk", download the
Tiger 2003 data from the site in README.MAPS, and snag the
tgr2shp.dbfawk file from Tom's site or upgrade to the latest Xastir
which has a copy in it.  You'll be good to go, and will have the
additional advantage of being able to configure which zoom levels
things appear at, what colors to use, etc.

You'll need pcre library also.


> Is the 2003 tiger data bundled somewhere, or do I need to do some sort
> of pre-processing on it (e.g., to get color, different levels of detail
> at different zoom levels)?  In other words, can I get the tiger data to
> be displayed more or less like the tiger-generated raster maps, e.g.,
> water is blue, larger roads have different colors and wider lines,
> state parks are green, small features go away on larger views, etc?
>
> I've looked around, but the information I've found so far is mostly
> quite terse, and leads me to believe I'll need to become a GIS/mapping
> guru to make use of the data I can get my hands on.

That's what we have Gerry, Tom, and others for!  You'll learn as you
go though.

It's available already processed, but you don't get the polygons
that you get with the Tigermap pages.  All the vector stuff is there
though.


> They sure are, but they're lots better than nothing...

Which is why I'm using the USGS geoTIFF topo maps... For now...

--
Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
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