[Xastir] How to get ready to use maps?

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 11:18:36AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <wm5z at comcast.net> flavor, containing:
> 
> 
> I am wanting to use this software to do two things in SAR service.
> Allow tracking in NM of mobile units, which it now does, but only when I 
> have the local network in the house to download the maps. I will be 
> adding the use of a TNC in the future for local input of GPS data from 
> field units.

Hello Steve, glad to see that you're going to be using XASTIR for NM SAR.
I'm a SAR Field Coordinator up in NMSP District 5, where SAR usage of APRS is
dominated by APRS+SA+AllTopoMaps *shudder* -- the only time xastir gets used 
up here is when I'm running the mission and have no comms support from 
NM SAR Support. (By the way, might you be the person I met in TorC on an
air mission last year?)

First --- the on-line Tiger maps are OK, but useless in SAR work except maybe
to help find directions to base (and then they're not quite accurate enough).
Topo quads, trail maps, and other types of local data are what will make
the thing most useful to you, IMHO.

You can also get hold of FAA sectional maps, and with a little work fix them
up to be usable in xastir (instructions and URL in README.maps).

> Here is what I got when I ran ./configure;
> xastir 1.4.2 has been configured using the
> following external libraries.
> 
> 
> Building with libproj ........................... : no
> Building with GeoTiff ........................... :

You want GeoTiff support in order to display USGS topo quads.  Install both 
libproj and geotiff according to README.maps and you'll have
access to TONS of maps.  Especially since you're in NM, where almost all of
the USGS topo quads in all three scales are available for free download from 
http://sar.lanl.gov/

What you can't get from sar.lanl.gov you can often find at UNM Resource 
Geographic Information Systems (address is on my "shape_web" page, 
http://www.swcp.com/~russo/shape_web/).

> Building with GDAL/OGR .......................... : no
> Building with ShapeLib .......................... : no
> Building with pcre .............................. : yes
> Building with dbfawk ............................ : no

You want ShapeLib, definitely.  The TIGER/Line data that Derrick Brashear
has converted to shapefile format, and that Kevin Glueck has made available on
a Texas A&M web server is what you want, and you'll need shapelib for that.
With shapelib installed you'll also see that dbfawk gets enabled --- that
allows for tuning of map rendering.  Xastir ships with appropriate dbfawk
files to render the converted TIGER/Line shapefiles reasonably well, so all
you need to do is install the shapefiles where they can be found, index the
new maps, and redraw.

I have all of New Mexico counties' TIGER shapefiles on my laptop (though
I haven't updated them since the 2004 data got converted) and they work
quite well for my own SAR purposes (although TIGER data is horribly inaccurate
in spots and not intended for this type of use).

Curt has also made xastir able to read TIGER/Line data directly using the 
GDAL/OGR library, but you don't have that enabled either.

Instructions for installing shapelib are in README.maps

If you want to do any sort of custom map work you'll want GDAL/OGR mainly
for the conversion utilities "gdalwarp" and "ogr2ogr" --- I pretty much never
use xastir's built in OGR support, because I'm a control freak and can't
customize my map presentation without hacking on the code the way you can do
with shapelib and dbfawk.  But gdalwarp and ogr2ogr are worth the price
of admission, because you can use them to convert just about any georeferenced
raster map to a lat/lon for use in xastir, and just about any freely available
GIS vector layer converted to shapefile format.

> Building with rtree indexing (experimental) ..... : no

If you're running on a machine with enough memory (I think 256Meg should do
the trick if it's a unix-like OS and not Cygwin, and 512M is probably adequate
on Cygwin), you can speed up shapefile rendering if you enable rtree spatial
indexing --- just add "--with-rtree" to your configure line.

FWIW, I have begun collecting shapefile layers for New Mexico on my 
shape_web page --- most of my layers are for the Cibola National Forest
here near Albuquerque, but I do have some state-wide data you might like (e.g. 
the shapefile map of NM State Police Districts).

Hope that helps, and hope we run into each other down the line.


-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 
 "The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly
  worth the effort." -- Norton Juster