[Xastir] New FC7 install troubles with both Release and Stable CVS

[Tom Russo]

On Sun, Jun 10, 2007 at 05:25:28PM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <scpeters at mac.com> flavor, containing:
>  Hi Tate and Curt,
> 
>  I have Xastir working without rtree currently.  It does fine except it does 
>  take a little while on some redraws.
> 
>  I tried updating to the developer's codebase to see if it was something 
>  unusual in the intermediate releases.  I also deleted the files in the rtree 
>  directory and having cvs replace them.  Alas, nothing has quite worked to 
>  fix the rtree problem.  I could try wiping the whole Xastir src directory 
>  and updating that.  It shouldn't work, but who knows?
> 
>  I've also re-ran the Fedora system updater to see if anything obvious was 
>  old or out of date.
> 
>  Now I did install Shapelib, but it is also included in the Xastir install 
>  now?  Could that be a problem - i.e. should I try removing Shapelib?

I really doubt that cleaning out the xastir code and replacing shapelib will
have any effect on this issue, which appears to be a linker bogon.

I just downloaded the 2.8GB Fedora 7 DVD ISO to my work machine and will
burn a DVD on Monday --- then I'll make a virtual machine running F7 and
see if I can reproduce and diagnose the problem.  I don't know that I can
do anything since the linker error is completely meaningless to me, but 
maybe I can track it down.

>  Two other things I've noticed on unrelated topics:
>  1) There's a ton of .geo radar files out there that simply don't work 
>  because they point to a nonexistent web location at NOAA/NWS.  I guess NOAA 
>  updated their system a while ago (I've been out of aprs for a couple of 
>  years.)  I was able to relocate the correct file and fix the geo file for my 
>  area.  The Xastir wiki and readme.maps still points to these download 
>  locations with the outdated .geo's.

Sign up for a Wiki account and drop us a line --- we'll get you set up with
"wikieditor" privileges so you can fix the wiki.  If you send a patch to 
README.MAPS we can commit the updated info, too.

>  2) My day job involves working with GIS, so I was using ArcGIS to export a 
>  geotiff.  I am using PAMAP data, which is beautiful georeferenced RGB color 
>  tif files with 1-2 foot resolution.  I sure would like one in color, but 
>  ArcGIS can only export 24 Bit True color, 8 Bit Palette, or 8 Bit grayscale. 
>   Xastir can't interpret the 24 bit color, and the 8 bit palette must create 
>  a custom CLUT that Xastir doesn't interpret.  In 8 bit palette mode, the 
>  data exists, comes through georeferenced perfectly, as I can see the 
>  patterns, but the colors are seemingly randomly chosen and assigned.

You can use the GDAL tools to turn the 24 bit color images to 8 bit color
that Xastir can use.  Use "rgb2pct.py" (which requires gdal to be built with
python support).

I have had very bad experiences with ArcGIS-generated GeoTIFFs, because it
seems that ArcGIS doesn't generate proper GeoTIFF metadata tags.  Every time
I've ever gotten GeoTIFFs generated by ESRI products I've had to massage them
with GDAL to get them readable by Xastir or GRASS.  Your milage may vary
(i.e., perhaps the latest versions of ArcGIS are better).

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick