[Xastir] Mapping

[Jason Winningham]

On Nov 9, 2006, at 7:10 PM, Stephen Brown Jr wrote:

> Well I managed to download the shapefiles for my county based off  
> of the
> Tiger map data from
> ftp://aprs.tamu.edu/pub/Xastir/Maps/TIGER/xastir.tamu.edu/2004/ 
> counties/TN/

That's a good start.

> Reading over this page
> http://www.swcp.com/~russo/shape_web/tutorial.htmland it appears that
> there are a lot of options you can configure, but a
> little of this was over my head at this point.

Well, it so happens that there are already some dbfawk files for the  
TIGER shapefiles written and in place in the standard xastir  
distribution, so you don't really have to start from scratch the way  
Tom's tutorials walk you through.  You can find them in /usr/local/ 
share/xastir/config/tgr*.dbfawk (assuming you installed in /usr/ 
local/).  Use the info on Tom's web site to figure out how to tweak  
the dbfawk files to behave more like you want.

> So now that I have some data, I would like to make it look like the  
> original
> tiger data and dont really know where to begin?

Begin by asking _why_ you want it to look like the original TIGER  
data. (:  By "original TIGER data" I assume you mean the TIGER data  
as rendered by the TIGER server.  The short answer is that it'd be  
tough.  A longer and more useful answer is to look in the dbfawks  
mentioned earlier and start modifying.  You can probably eventually  
get there.

You can also affect how your maps look by changing the background  
color and the map labels fonts (map -> configure).

> What are all those different files for and how can I start editing  
> this to my liking?

The files you mention are the actual data.  You generally want to  
change how that data is rendered (via dbfawks, map properties, and  
tactics) and not actually change the data.

> I also have MapInfo data available to me as well as Precision  
> Mapping and
> Street Atlas, as Darryl mentioned it would be useful if we could  
> somehow use
> that data as well if xastir supports it?

Talk to the vendors about that.  Mapping programs are generally  
somewhere between extremely unhelpful and hostile about use of their  
data by some other software.

There is an APRS application called APRS+SA that's some sort of  
plugin type app for a very old version of SA (v9, IIRC).   
Unfortunately it was recommended to our balloonsat project and I have  
found it to be so frustrating and complex that it is useless.  I have  
been actively campaigning to replace it with xastir (or anything  
else!) since the first time I used it.  APRS+SA convinced me to use a  
dedicated app like xastir.

> I have to say this is the most I have ever used xastir and it is  
> the most
> advanced APRS program I have ever used. Good job devs.

hear, hear!

-Jason
kg4wsv