[Xastir] Making better looking maps

[Stephen - K1LNX]

That looks pretty good and gives me an idea of what to start with.

I do have one question on the downloaded Tiger data. When I unzipped
Tennessee for example, it created two directories, Polygons and Polylines.
In the corresponding directories I see (I'll use my home county as an
example):

/usr/local/share/xastir/maps/static_maps/TN/Polygons
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1352805 2007-05-08 15:06 Carter_County.dbf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1276956 2007-05-08 15:06 Carter_County.shp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   25156 2007-05-08 15:06 Carter_County.shx

/usr/local/share/xastir/maps/static_maps/TN/Polylines
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  2534921 2007-05-08 15:04 Carter_County.dbf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      143 2007-05-08 15:04 Carter_County.prj
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1709364 2007-05-08 15:04 Carter_County.shp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   104580 2007-05-08 15:04 Carter_County.shx

What is the difference between the Polygons and Polylines directory, if any?
What file or files do I edit to start customizing colors, line widths, etc?



On 8/9/07, 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
>
>
>


-- 
Stephen Brown - ARS K1LNX
Johnson City, TN EM86uh