[Xastir] GNIS files

[Troy M. Campbell]

Richard,

GNIS files, the way XASTIR reads them are just pipe delimited text
files.  Theres' no dbf for them.


Tom,

That's the conclusion I came too also.

I'm going to gen up a perl script to translate the format, but it won't
help the zoom level issue.  I thought of a crippled up work around but
it still requires that I can find the population numbers from
_somewhere_.

When I get the crappyGNIS_2_previousGNIS.pl written, I'll see if anyone
wants to use it.

Is there a document or table in the source maybe or in a config file
that specifies the zoom level breaks for GNIS files?


73 de Troy, KC0MIC

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Russo [mailto:russo at bogodyn.org] 
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 7:54 PM
To: Richard Polivka, N6NKO
Cc: Troy M. Campbell; xastir at xastir.org
Subject: Re: [Xastir] GNIS files

On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 07:41:24PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron
collision of the <r.polivka at sbcglobal.net> flavor, containing:
> If you need to dig into the .dbf file to get the headers, there are 
> some programs out there that can do it. OpenOffice Calc can parse the 
> .dbf file and show the metadata headers so the .dbfawk file can be
written.

GNIS files are not shapefiles, they're just plain text with one line per
feature.

Yes, xastir uses the population size to select zoom levels for populated
places.

I, too, noticed that the GNIS file format changed (for the worse) some
time ago when I tried to download the one for Alaska a few months ago.
But that's all I noticed, since I didn't really need it and hadn't the
time to figure it all out.

AFAICT, there is no place to get the GNIS files in the old format with
that field available, and there is no comparable field that can be used
to select populated places by population --- we'd just have to display
them all at all zoom levels, and this would require a code change in
xastir to support the new format (without breaking old format, because
if we do that then we'd all be forced to download the newer, less
functional data).

> Troy M. Campbell wrote:
> >All,
> > 
> >For some reason I decided to start from scratch with all my maps, 
> >spent a week compiling the latest tiger files, downloading dbfawks, 
> >shapefiles, tweeked this and that, etc till I was pretty tired of it.
> >Then "standardized" the zoom levels to get the rendering to appear as

> >fast as possible while being generic as possible.
> > 
> >The last task was get the GNIS files for pop places, historical 
> >places and some others from 
> >http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm
> >.
> >Imagine my dismay when I found out that they are in a format that 
> >xastir won't read.
> > 
> >No problem, that's why perl exists.    Oooops,   not only did the
format
> >change, but they dropped the "estimated population" field.   I'm
pretty
> >sure that xastir uses this to pick what to show at what zoom level.
> > 
> >Does anyone know where the files can be gotten in the original
format...
> >(New data, old format)?
> > 
> >Or has anyone overcome the problem already?
> > 
> >73 de Troy, KC0MIC
> >_______________________________________________
> >Xastir mailing list
> >Xastir at xastir.org
> >http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
> >
> >  
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at xastir.org
> http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir

-- 
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