[Xastir] Summary of New Capability

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Keith Kaiser wrote:

> Do I now need to go into each and every county within each state and run the 
> vi edit (vi works fine in Mac btw)?

Nope.


> Or do I just need to run it once at the 
> tiger2008 level?

Nope.  There's exactly one file called "map_index.sys".  It exists
in each user's "~/.xastir/config/" directory if that use has ever
run Xastir.  Go to that directory to edit it.

The "map_index.sys" file contains the extents of each map Xastir has
indexed so that Xastir can pass it by quickly if it doesn't
currently fit on your map screen (Xastir doesn't have to read the
map file to know the extents, it just reads in the index file at
startup and knows all).  The file contains additional information
such as map levels, methods of determining the order of your map
stackup.  When you go into Map Chooser->Properties, much of the
information you mess with there goes into the "map_index.sys" file.
The edits we're doing with "vi" or the Perl script Lee posted are
just a very fast way of setting up your map levels so that you don't
have to do it by hand in Map Chooser->Properties.


> I'm learning more and more about the workings of Unix but I 
> have a ways to go so I don't know where exactly to do this edit.
>
> vi ~/.xastir/config/map_index.sys
>  :g/tabblock/s/01000/00995/
>  :g/pointlm/s/01000/00996/
>  :g/arealm/s/01000/00997/
>  :wq

Nope.  Download all of the maps and explode them.  Start Xastir and
reindex new maps.  Shut down Xastir.  Do the level edits with VI or
the Perl script that Lee posted.  Start up Xastir.  If you decide to
download more maps, do the same thing with the indexing, editing,
and shutting down/restarting Xastir around the edit process.

Note that there are 4 edit lines now instead of 3.  See my latest
summary or Lee's latest Perl script.


> Ultimately I'd like to see road names down to the smallest road at a very low 
> zoom level and only major roads as I zoom out. Chasing a balloon starts out 
> very wide and narrows down as we get closer and closer to touchdown.

I'm sure there are people here that could help you do that but I'm
probably not one of them:  I've done just enough dbfawk to get some
new Shapefile maps displaying from time to time, and no more.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
   Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
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