[Xastir] YAFRODU

[Dan Brown]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Tapio Sokura wrote:

> John Kraus wrote:
> > You missed my point.  Xastir has no actual maps in the basic install 
> > unless you have an internet connection.  I think this is a bad idea 
> 
> The world shapefile is included with Xastir, it has country names, 
> borders and large waters (at least oceans, hi). But I guess the problem 
> with that is that shapefile support is not a part of the basic set of 
> supported map formats. I agree that some kind of always usable basic 
> world map would be a good idea, and by default zoomed enough out so you 
> can actually see that it is a world map.


After spending a bunch of time searching around the net, I'm coming
to the conclusion, as I imagine others have before me, that providing a
starter map is easier said than done.  There's lots of maps out there, but,
finding one that is in the base "winaprs" format and is freely
distributable isn't easy. 

Finding winaprs maps isn't too hard, nor is finding basic outline or
timezone or political maps for the world. Distributable in some cases
depends somewhat on your interpretation of terms like "educational use" or
"personal use." Finding maps in usable formats depends on your ability to
convert from a variety of raster (gif, jpg, pdf, etc) formats to winaprs. 

I'm currently in the midst of reading the docs for the winaprs map format:
http://www.winaprs.org/MapFile.htm 



Dan. 
--
Dan Brown 
brown at brauhausdc.org