[Xastir] New User

[Tom Russo]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:38:08AM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <hank at hanklambert.com> flavor, containing:
> I am a new user to Xastir. I just installed Linux Mint 10 and installed
> Xastir via Synaptic. I got it up and running in less than 5 minutes using an
> Internet Server. It seems to be working great, and I see my position on
> aprs.fi. My question regards maps. I also have APRSISCE32 running on a
> Windows machine, and I love the look of the maps. On Xastir, all of my maps
> are line drawings. I have tried to download some online maps on
> /Online/teraserver.geo and /Online/USRadar.geo as well as others. All of the
> maps are either line drawings or no maps at all. When I resize the view, I
> can see the connection to the server in the lower left corner. I'm sure that
> it is a package or something that I am missing, but I have no idea what it
> is. I want to set this up at Orlando Hamcation at our Linux Booth.

The  version of Xastir you can get through synaptic is very old (1.9.4, if I 
recall correctly) and the main maps it could have gotten from the internet 
were the Tiger maps.  These are no longer available (TIGER/Line on-line maps 
were served by the US Census, and the server was permanently taken down not 
long after the Xastir 1.9.6 or 1.9.8 release, I don't remember which).

The latest version of Xastir (2.0.0 for the stable release, 2.0.1 for the
bleeding-edge CVS version) has access to precisely the same on-line maps
that APRSISCE uses (Open Street Maps).  These are very pretty and make for a 
good initial choice.

You can't get this version through Synaptic (or "apt" or "aptitude"), you have
to build from source.  This is primarily because the people who maintain the
Debian package are not active Xastir users, do not follow Xastir development,
and rarely update that package --- the Xastir developers do not maintain any
binary releases, for that matter (it's enough work supporting the code base
itself).  If you pick through the archives of this mailing list, you should
be able to find sufficient instructions for building Xastir from source on 
Mint.  I believe someone posted only in the last couple of hours about it. 

 Here's what Ray Wells said a few hours ago:

  http://lists.xastir.org/pipermail/xastir/2011-January/019501.html

In short, instructions for building on Mint are pretty much the same as those
for building on Ubuntu, with one or two minor changes.  If you like APRSISCE,
you'll find it worthwhile to update to Xastir 2.0.0 or later so you can get
at the OpenStreetMaps on-line maps.

Not surprised you're unimpressed with the few remaning on-line maps other than
Tiger.  The Terraserver maps are mostly aerial photos or topo maps.  USRadar 
is just an overlay of current weather radar, and is often devoid of anything 
interesting to see.

When working in situations where internet access is unavailable, Xastir gives 
you the ability to use locally stored maps  of either raster
or line variety, but collecting a good set can be a challenge.  I'm not 
sure that README.MAPS has been kept up to date with the current best choices
there.  Many users have had good luck downloading shapefiles from 
OpenStreetMaps.  There's a slew of good choices, but the work involved in
preparing them for use and making them look nice can be a little daunting at
first.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."