[Xastir] Potential new "default" offline map in the works

[stanley stanukinos]

Tom, you are doing a thankless job so I am saying thank you for all you do with Xastir. 
Sent from Stan’s IPhone

> On Dec 11, 2025, at 11:39 PM, Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org> wrote:
> 
> Since my attempt to get early feedback on the map set by providing
> a tarball was a disaster (bad instructions, poorly constructed tarball,
> and who knows what else), we have just gone ahead and pushed the new map
> and initial map selection process to github on the master branch.
> 
> If you track the bleeding edge of Xastir code, it's there now.
> 
> The maps are installed in ${xastir's install prefix}/share/xastir/maps/NaturalEarth
> by "make install".
> 
> A brand new user, if running a version of Xastir with shapefile support,
> will get their brand new config directory populated such that the new maps
> just magically show up.
> 
> If they don't have shapefile support compiled in, they get the same old map
> we have had since 2006.
> 
> This has no impact on existing users with active .xastir/config directories
> in their home directory, other than providing a new map option they can
> choose themselves from the map chooser.
> 
> There may be tweaks required to the dbfawks between now and the next release,
> but please check out the new included maps and see how they look to you.
> 
> These are not intended to be detailed maps.  They are the bare minimum
> map to get something interesting to look at the first time you open Xastir,
> and for that something to be a bit closer to this century's world borders.
> 
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2025 at 12:44:33PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
>> It has been pointed out that when Xastir is started for the very first time
>> ever, it selects the 'worldhi.map' file as the default map.
>> 
>> This map is so old it shows the USSR, East Germany, and Yugoslavia borders.
>> 
>> This map was chosen because it is in a format that the absolute minimum
>> build of Xastir can display, if no other map formats are supported.
>> 
>> https://github.com/Xastir/Xastir/issues/152
>> 
>> A long time ago a good set of shapefiles was identified that might serve
>> as a better default view, but during investigation of those shapefiles we
>> found a number of bugs in Xastir that were show-stoppers, and there was
>> nobody with time to fix those bugs.
>> 
>> Those bugs have been fixed in the last week or two, and it's time to consider
>> the new maps as defaults.  New features have been added to Xastir to make
>> these new maps render as nicely as possible.
>> 
>> The plan is that when Xastir starts up for the very first time, if the
>> build supports shapefiles we'll default to these shapefiles as the map you
>> get selected.  Only if you're firing up a bare-minimum build of Xastir for
>> the first run will you get the bare-minimum quality map.  Since package
>> managers aren't packaging bare-minimum builds, perhaps very few folks will
>> be stuck with a crude late-1980s vintage world map.
>> 
>> Please feel free to check out the proposed new default map set by downloading
>> the data and building the latest Xastir.
>> 
>> Please see this comment: https://github.com/Xastir/Xastir/issues/152#issuecommen
>> t-3643187939
>> for how you can download the (2MB) tarball of the proposed new maps and their
>> rendering rule DBFAWK files, and see if you like the look.
>> 
>> If you don't want to download the data to view it, there are some screen shots
>> on the issue report.
>> 
>> --
>> Tom Russo    KM5VY
>> Tijeras, NM  
>> 
>> echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z] [n-z][a-m]
>> 
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>> http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
> 
> --
> Tom Russo    KM5VY
> Tijeras, NM  
> 
> echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z] [n-z][a-m]
> 
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