[Xastir] Making better looking maps

[Jason Winningham]

On Aug 9, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Stephen - K1LNX wrote:

> What is the limitation on this? Is it something that can't be coded  
> in?
> Hard/complex? Just curious....

I suspect it's a limitation of the linestyles available in Xlib  
without resorting to a) heavy coding, or b) adding yet another  
support package requirement, but only the developer who made that  
design decision knows for sure...

> I'm willing to play, but in the end I want the best looking maps  
> possible
> that are easy to read etc.

"like google maps" is not the only solution to the problem "easy to  
read".

My maps evolved for a while before I settled on what I currently use,  
and if I saw someone else's that I like or if another data set became  
available they'd likely change again.

I use National Atlas (www.nationalatlas.gov) shapefiles for zoom  
levels > 128 and TIGER shapefiles <= 128.  The Nat'l Atlas maps look  
like this with my configuration:

http://www.eng.uah.edu/~jdw/xastir/box-snapshot.png

light green is background, blue is water, dark green is parks/refuges/ 
forests, black lines are highways, red lines are interstates/ 
controlled access roads, dashed lines are railroads, yellow areas are  
city limits.


Here are the things that are easy to change with dbfawk controlled  
shapefiles:

- background color (OK, you don't do that with a dbfawk)

- color and width of lines

- style of lines (solid or dashed)

- display level of particular features (this more or less adjusts the  
level of detail)

- color and pattern for filled polygons

- display level for labels (can be different that display level for  
the feature they describe)

- don't display things you want to leave out entirely

-Jason
kg4wsv