[Xastir] Maps Offline?

[Curt, WE7U]

On Sat, 18 Sep 2010, Eldon Brown wrote:

> The  problem (as I see it) I do not know "how to know" which maps (and at
> what "zoom level") I have downloaded until it is too late and offline :-(
> What I get is a big RED area for missing map sections.

You don't mention which out of the hundreds (thousands?) of possible
map sources you're trying to use.

> Is there a way to shade missing map sections for one (or two) higher zoom
> levels above the current displayed level?  If so, I could easily ensure that
> I have down loaded the maps that I plan to use while offline.

If you're talking about OSM maps, we don't have any auto-downloaders
and they're problematic because if you download too many tiles in
one day from one server they can shut you down at some limit (300
tiles?).

You can either test off-line before your trip and then go back and
get the ones that are missing, or you can do it the smart way and
skip the tiles altogether for off-line use:  Use the "Cloudmade OSM
Shapefiles" (that's the search term you use in Google to find them),
which are downloadable Shapefile extracts from the OSM database.
You can download them based on country and/or state.  They won't be
as pretty, but they'll have about the same information.  They're
also super-fast to render compared to the tiles.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.                         <http://www.eskimo.com/~archer>
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