[Xastir] maps

[Curt, WE7U]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Chris Bell wrote:

> > Ask Chris Bell.  I think he holds the record at # of maps, in the
> > thousands easily.  I'm in the several hundred range, but haven't
>
>
> Yeah, that would be me...
> about 1500 shape files (all of CA AZ NV) from esri (about 1.5 Gb),
> 173,192 (!!) jpg files from the topo! for CA (four resolutions) (about 8 Gb)
> about 1000 other maps, (radar urls, pocket, dos, GNIS, etc.)
> 8 Gb of DRGs for AZ that I have not sorted through yet
> 1 Gb of DRGs for CA that I don't use since I have the topo! jpgs
> 600Mb of DRGs for NV that have messed up geo data


> The large number of maps does become a problem of time... I never use
> the full set of topos, to index a 78409 subset of maps took my 1Ghz

      1,500
    173,192
      1,000
    +  more
    -------
    175,692 (more than)

I'd say you definitely hold the record!   You need help dude...  ;-)


> WARNING... reindexing to remove some maps will remove any layer/zoom
> properties you set for them...

Yep.  I think that is the desired operation for the general case.  I
consider your uses unusual.


> 1. subdirectories - seperate types of data, and layers to make it easy
> to select groups at once.
>
> 2. map files - make them smaller regions.  the geo extents make
> loading several small regions much faster than one big file.  (so
> make counties or smaller instead of the whole state at a time!)
>
> 3. layers - (data content) Seperate them out, and put them in the
> subdirectories above for easy selection of content for the current
> mission.
>
> 4. display layers - spend some time playing with the stacking of the
> maps, and figure out a good system.  Unfortunately labels are drawn at
> the same time as their feature, so subsequent layers can obscure lower
> labels.

I haven't run across that one, but you're right.  Would it be better
to run through each set of maps twice, drawing the features for all
and then the labels, or would that slow things down too much?  We
could also try to cache the labels and then draw them at the end,
but that poses other problems.

--
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!"