[Xastir] Xastir with offline maps

[Tom Russo]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 09:58:48PM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <n1mjf at n1mjf.com> flavor, containing:
> I downloaded all 50 states and set them up. Once again it's not the same
> performance as the OSM-Mapnik map. The Mapnik takes about 20 seconds to
> load, the RI shapefiles take about 15 minutes to load on the Pi. 

That's because mapnik maps are raster images that are just blatted to the 
screen.  All the work needed to generate those images from the vector data
is done by the server you connect to, which then just serves up pieces of
imagery for you to display.

Off-line, Xastir either has to have a huge cache of those raster tiles (it
is possible to cache them, but not automatable, if I understand correctly),
or it has to render vector data locally.  Rendering vector data is slow and
Xastir's rendering engine is NOT up to Mapnik's standard.

> The end
> result is gross. Black background with roads, ponds and red "X"s all over.
> I'm sure there is some conversion I have to do with the .dbf files. I tried
> renaming them to .dbfawk, I did get some result from that but it made it
> way worse and complained about too many rows or something. I will keep
> digging.

No, renaming the dbf files to dbfawk is very much the wrong thing to do.

What you need to do is make sure that your Xastir is built with pcre 
and dbfawk.  Please post the last block of lines that "configure" prints,
where it has all the features listed and whether they're enabled or not.  
dbfawk is an internal feature of Xastir, pcre is an external library you 
need to have on your system with its development headers when you configure
Xastir.

Shapefiles look like crap without dbfawk, except for a small handful of
extremely outdated shapefiles that have hard-coded support.

You can't get any maps that look like the mapnik maps unless you generate
them with mapnik or pull them off the web live.  Xastir's map rendering
engine just isn't sophisticated enough to do much better than it does with
dbfawk.  But without dbfawk you are wasting your time with shapefiles.



> I was also wondering.. Will xastir keep the map focus on me? I noticed the
> TrackMe button. Is that what that does?

Yes, Xastir will keep your station on screen if you use TrackMe, and highlight
it with a bunch of colored rings.

> On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 10:45 PM, Curt, WE7U <curt.we7u at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 10 Jun 2012, Kurt Savegnago wrote:
> >
> >  I simply moved the old TAMU tiger directory to /usr/local/share/xastir so
> >> if I want to use them again, I just swap out the OSM shapefiles to
> >> /usr/local/share/xastir and put the tiger maps back in to
> >> /usr/local/share/xastir/maps.  Works like a charm.  Perhaps there might be
> >> a way to do it from the menu-line without having the superimposition
> >> switching from one offline mapset to another.  Seems like anything in /maps
> >> is read together even if they are different mapsets.  I don't mind as the
> >> manual swapping works fine.
> >>
> >
> > Turn _off_ automaps.
> >
> > Put each map set in a separate directory under
> > /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/.  You can create any sort of tree you like
> > beneath here, and as long as the user running Xastir can read the
> > directories/files there, you're good to go.  I have lots of directories and
> > subdirectories below my maps directory.
> >
> > Select the directory with the Map Chooser to switch between map sets.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Curt, WE7U.        http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
> > APRS Client Capabilities:  http://www.eskimo.com/~archer/**
> > aprs_capabilities.html<http://www.eskimo.com/%7Earcher/aprs_capabilities.html>
> >
> > ______________________________**_________________
> > Xastir mailing list
> > Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> > http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-**bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir<http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir>
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
>       Mathew F.
>   mat at srt4pc.net
> xboxor at gmail.com
>   n1mjf at n1mjf.com
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        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