[Xastir] Open Street Map Shapefiles (vector maps)

[Curt, WE7U]

I just checked in some dbfawk files for these Shapefiles:

http://downloads.cloudmade.com/

The specific maps I used for my development are here:

http://downloads.cloudmade.com/north_america/united_states/washington#downloads_breadcrumbs

as the file "washington.shapefiles.zip", at 57 MB.

There are two Shapefile extracts of OSM data available, but only the
Cloudmade site had maps for the U.S., so that's what I developed
for.  We could certainly make up dbfawk files for the other set of
maps if need be.

Here's what I did:

Downloaded that file, put it in /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/
somewhere (down a few directory levels in my case), extracted the
files, got rid of the original downloaded file.

Do a "cvs update" of Xastir, then the usual:

     ./bootstrap.sh
     ./configure
     make
     sudo make install
     sudo chmod 4755 /usr/local/bin/xastir

You must start at the bootstrap.sh stage as the dbfawk files are new
and you have to create a new build system that includes them or they
won't get installed.

Bring up the new build of Xastir.

If you live near a lot of water like I do:  Set your map background
to Steel Blue.  Select the new OSM Shapefile maps.  I also selected
the NOAA county shapefile in order to tell where the landmasses
exist.  I set the county map to a lower Map Level than the OSM maps
so that it gets drawn first, with the OSM details on top of it.

If you don't live near a large body of water you can probably skip
setting the map background to blue plus skip loading the county
shapefile.  In that case set the map background to grey and you
should be set.

For those that were looking for a downloadable set of current street
maps and were attempting to do it with the OSM tiles:  This method
with the OSM Shapefiles gives you a much faster mapping system with
a lot less space taken up on your laptop.  It's not as the OSM
raster maps though.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.                         <http://www.eskimo.com/~archer>
    APRS:  Where it's at!                    <http://www.xastir.org>
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Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
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