[Xastir] Making better looking maps

[Bernard Michael Tyers]

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.

=====

Hi,

Can I ask how you created/plotted the grey dotted rectangular box on
the map? I am guessing its the search area of that particular
aircraft?

Was it a tracker device in the aircraft flying in that pattern, or was
it a "man-made" object?

thanks
bernard

On 09/08/2007, Jason Winningham <jdw at eng.uah.edu> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
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