[Xastir] How to create DBFAWK

[Kevin Ratcliff]

Skyler,

Are you referring to the OpenStreetMaps shapefile extracts that are free to
download from http://download.geofabrik.de/? If so, you may be able to take
a "shortcut" on your quest to get labels. Let me explain.

A few years ago there were OSM shapefile extracts available at
http://downloads.cloudmade.com/. The xastir developers did a lot of work
creating custom dbfawk files for these shapefiles. The really nice thing
about the dbfawk files for these shapefiles is that they not only labeled
the street names but also color coded them by type and such. They weren't
as pretty looking as the online OSM tiles, but they worked offline and were
extremely fast for panning/zooming. Sadly the Cloudmade free download
service no longer exists.

It appears all is not lost though. The Geofabrik shapefile DBF file fields
aren't that much different from the Cloudmade DBF fields. I just tried a
quick hack on an existing dbfawk file that was designed for a Cloudmade
shapefile and it seemed to work with little modification using a Geofabrik
shapefile.

Here's what I did (I'm sure there are better ways of doing this, but I
dunno what they are):

I located the original file named OSM_Cloudmade_highway.dbfawk (on my
system it was located in /usr/share/xastir/config/) and copied that file to
new file called roads.dbfawk in my xastir maps directory (next to the other
roads.* files that I downloaded from Geofabrik). Then I looked at the
format of the Geofabrik roads.dbf file and based on that made a couple
simple changes to my roads.dbfawk file:

Change the line that reads

dbfinfo="TYPE:NAME:ONEWAY:LANES";

to

dbfinfo="OSM_ID:NAME:REF:TYPE:ONEWAY:BRIDGE:TUNNEL:MAXSPEED";

and change the line that reads

dbffields="TYPE:NAME:ONEWAY:LANES";

to

dbffields="TYPE:NAME:ONEWAY";

With luck, you should now be able to re-index your maps in xastir and open
your roads.shp and see a nicer looking map with streets labeled.

Perhaps if there is enough demand for offline OSM maps in xastir someone
could do a better job of converting the existing Cloudmade dbfawk files to
work with the Geofabrik shapefiles and include the dbfawk files in the
xastir source (sorry, I'm not volunteering).

Kevin
KB9MQU



On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Skyler F <electricity440 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would like to show some names on my shape files and I remember hearing
> that I needed to create a DBFAWK file.
>
> Can anybody help on creating a DBFAWK file so I can see labels? I am not
> seeing anything right now with the shape files I downloaded from Open
> Street Maps
>
> Skyler KD0WHB
>
> --
> Skyler Fennell
> amsatnet.info
> KDØWHB
> electricity440 at gmail.com
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