[Xastir] Slow raster map render

[Tom Russo]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 12:04:50PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <kg4wsv at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
> On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Tom Hayward <esarfl at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why is Xastir slow to render raster maps? I'm curious what is actually
> > happening behind the scenes. It appears that Xastir is re-projecting
> > the raster maps, requiring an expensive render. Why not just
> > re-project the APRS stations and any shapefile overlay to match the
> > raster tiles? Wouldn't this be much faster?
> 
> If there were only 2 choices (as your question sort of implies), I'm
> pretty sure the developers would have done it that way.
> 
> Since xastir supports so many different maps (formats, projections,
> yada yada yada), each one gets handled on the fly.
> 
> Now, some sort of "no monkeying required" format might be nice, along
> with some tools to re-format (pre-render?) your favorite maps...

Minimal monkeying (with maximum georeferencing accuracy) is GeoTIFF in WGS84 
lat/lon format.  Tool is gdalwarp.  Command line guidelines are given in
README.MAPS, mostly referencing how to make rasters usable that are given
in projections Xastir can't use, but equally applicable for warping them
to the simplest format that requires minimal computation.

-- 
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