[Xastir] Converting National Geographic Maps?

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, Ran Talbott wrote:

> There's a tantalizing reference to converting Topo! maps for use by
> Xastir in one of the webpages about using it,  but I haven't found any
> other mention of that except an old note on the xastir-dev list about
> the possibility of doing it someday.

I need to track down that reference and kill it.  We probably won't
be supporting any commercial map packages now or in the future
unless we have agreements from them to do so.


> Since I don't have a broadband connection,  I bought a copy of Backroads
> Explorer,  hoping to either get it to run under WINE (it doesn't,
> dammit),  or at least get a collection of usable maps on CD.

Have you tried VMWare?  One of the free clones of the same?
Commercial VMWare runs pretty much anything.  You just have to be
willing to pay for it.  They have student discounts though.


> I assume that BE is pretty much the same as Topo!,  but with 100K maps
> instead of 24K.  So I'd really like to find out whether that conversion
> program ever got done (or at least to the point where I could make it
> usable without having to climb a long GIS learning curve).

Well, most commercial map companies don't want you to read their
formats, and if they're easily figured out, they probably will
change their format.  TOPO! used to have an easy-to-figure-out
format (as in no though required to do so).  They've changed it.

What sorts of maps are you trying for?  What area?  U.S. or Canada?
If so, there are free sources for what you're after.

--
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!"