[Xastir] Projects we can learn from?

[Jason Winningham]

On Aug 17, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Curt, WE7U wrote:

> I'd like people's comments on these:  "tmrs" and "roadnav" projects
> on SourceForge.

I finally got time to get on a system with all the prerequisites  
installed, so I'll comment on tmrs:

First, for those who don't want to install, here are the demo images  
the Makefile generates:

http://www.eng.uah.edu/~jdw/xastir/map1.png
http://www.eng.uah.edu/~jdw/xastir/map2.png

I generally like the way these look.  Of course, I'd like to have  
full control of the colors/styles/fonts/etc (ala dbfawk).

The mapserver part of the project looks good from an xastir point of  
view, assuming that it will generate maps with proper references, so  
that xastir could use these maps with little or no source  
modification by talking to the mapserver.  It would of course further  
complicate an xastir install if one installed the mapserver locally.   
If they do a better job of projection they'd generate better maps  
than the TIGERserver, plus we could potentially set up one or more  
"APRS map servers" on the internet, but that's getting a bit grandiose.

Another nice point is that it appears to be able to read raw TIGER  
data as well as shapefiles (not sure if shapefiles can be read now,  
or are in development, and if it only reads TIGER shapefiles).

It may need a bit of work: e.g., I think a label of "US 301" would be  
convey the same information and make for a less-cluttered map than  
"United States Highway 301". (:

Downsides: map data apparently needs to be converted to a custom tmrs  
format.  tmrs requires 4 libraries, three of which xastir doesn't use  
(gd, Z, freetype).  I think at least two of these are fairly common,  
though, and aren't nearly as complex as, say, ImageMagick. :|

I guess some questions are:

- is tmrc ready for prime-time yet?  There's no "configure" or "make  
install".

- are the maps properly georeferenced/projected/whatever, so that  
they're as accurate as we're used to in xastir?

- can xastir be modified to talk to the tmrs server without much effort?

- is integration of tmrs an xastir 1 project or an xastir 2 project?

-Jason
kg4wsv