[Xastir] Tiger2006 maps problem?

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 06:00:45PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <acraiga at pacbell.net> flavor, containing:
>  Hi Tom,
>  	I have PCRE installed.  The error message I get is:
> 
>  No DBFAWK signature for tiger2006/AK/tgr020132shppolyA.shp!  Using default.

Odd.

>  I tried changing the filenames around to make it happy

The file names don't matter.  What matters is the set of fields in the
dbf file.  If it says "no DBFAWK signature" it means that the dbfawk file's
"dbfinfo" line doesn't match the fields that are in the dbf file.

When I generate the 2006 second edition shapefiles using the process I 
described, it produces shapefiles that match the signature in the 
tgr2shppoly.dbfawk file that comes with xastir.  

Here's one thing you can try.  Look in the directory where you built xastir
(before you installed it).  In the src subdirectory there should be a program
called "testawk".

Pick one of your shapefiles.  For example, say it's /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/my_tiger/TGR02013.shp.  Run testawk like this:

   /path/to/xastir/src/testawk -D /usr/local/share/xastir/config -d /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/my_tiger/TGR02013.dbf 2>&1 | less

(assuming you use BASH as your shell, that'll redirect standard error to 
the same pipe as standard out, which you need)

It *should* show that the dbfawk signature matches.  But if it doesn't, please 
capture the "sig:" line and post it.

Or wait until Jason and I finish our conversions and get them all uploaded.
When I run testawk over the Aleutians_East_Borough file (which was derived
from TGR02013.ZIP), it matches the dbfawk signature of tgr2shppoly.dbfawk
Just Fine.

>  but that didn't seem to help (or I couldn't figure out the
>  naming scheme).  I started out with TGR02013.shp and
>  I added the "2shppolyA" to the name for the "tgr2shppoly.dbfawk"
>  script.
> 
>  How do you get the right dbfawk script to work on the
>  correct data file?

If you really wanna know, see my tutorial on DBFAWK at 
http://www.swcp.com/~russo/shape_web/tutorial.html or the Xastir Wiki page 
"HowTo:DBFAWK" for hints on how to get it working.

But there's clearly something wrong with your conversion, because if you
used Xastir-tigerpoly.py on the 2006 Second Edition files, it *should*
have made shapefiles that worked with tgr2shppoly.dbfawk.  I don't know what
could have gone wrong, because I did the conversion this afternoon using
that script.

Since you're interested in Alaska's tiger files, and the AK.zip file is not
yet available on Gerry's server, I've temporarily uploaded it to an
FTP site I have access to so that you can try it out now rather than later
--- it'll only stay there for two days before my ISP deletes it, though, so 
download it soon.

The Alaska file is ftp://ftp.swcp.com/pub/tmp/russo/AK.zip

It's the only one I've uploaded to this site.  The rest of them should
be up at aprs.tamu.edu in a day or two.

Lemme know if those work better for you.  The line files are in the AK/Polylines
directory of the zip file, the polygon features are in AK/Polygons.  Just
unzip the whole thing into your xastir maps directory, reindex, and select
both Polyline and Polygon directories in the map chooser.

If they don't work any better, please use the testawk program and post your
results --- when I run testawk on those files it shows a match. 

-- 
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