[Xastir] new user hello

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Chris wrote:

> I'm playing with APRS now and have Xastir 1.3.3 up and running on
> a Thinkpad T21 laptop running Slackware 10.0.  So far, so good
> with an uptime of 8 days on xastir.

Have an uptime of 38 days here on one instance of Xastir.  It's
getting pretty good at staying up for a long time.


> My goal is to setup the laptop in my vehicle, with dedicated APRS
> rig and tnc...maybe even a wireless card for those times I'm near
> an open AP.

Yep!  I have a setup like this in my Jeep at times.  I have a lot of
fun with it.


> I have noticed that shapefile maps tend to load slower than
> internet maps (tiger).  Is this a function of my machine, the
> software or the fact I have a large library of maps (entire state
> of TX)?

Depends on a few factors.  Are you loading a very large area at a
time?  Do you have "map levels" turned on?

I find that I can load shapefile street maps much faster than the
TigerMap images, but that's probably because I have dial-up at home
plus I'm not zoomed out too far in the Jeep and have "map levels"
turned on.  I also run topo maps in the Jeep and they work well as
long as I'm not zoomed out too far.  System in the Jeep is only a
P133 with 64MB RAM, so it's no speed demon.

Xastir keeps on index of the extents of each map file, whether it's
a vector or a raster map.  When you try to load the maps, Xastir
checks that index and only loads the selected maps that might fit on
the screen.  That speeds things up a lot.  "map levels" speeds
things up a bit more for vector maps, as Xastir won't draw some
stuff if you're zoomed out too far.  Also, the Shapefile maps have
extents in there for each line/polygon, and Xastir checks that.  If
the portion of the map isn't on your screen, Xastir skips that
object.

--
Curt, WE7U			         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!"