Well I guess I am not alone on the general frustration of increasing dealing
with .SHPs.... But there may be some good news...?
>>>>>>>> Just what is a WMS or WFS?
I just heard yesterday about WMS - Web Map Services and WFS - Web
Feature Services as the "new" common formats for making data available
over the web. ArcExplorer and ArcMap evidently support this already,
with MI to offer compatability with 7.5 (possibly) or 8.0 (definitely).
Could this be what you are looking for?
Cheers
M....
>>>>>>>> and some other comments ..... Buy design?
> - no internal info on projection nor datum, all geographical
> attributes default to black lines, black dots, and white interiors.
> Is this buy design?
Yes, it is by really bad design (if you think about how young the
format is, you must think how intelligent the developers were). Shape
is an extremely stupid format, no projection info, no colors, no text
etc. Just points, lines and polygons. In addition it's working with
DBASE version 0.00001, means column names are limited to 10 chars and
all uppercase (just ULTRA_UGLY).
> data environment, I was wondering if some of you with dual MapInfo
> and ESRI citizenship, might clue me/us in on how to better deal
> with .SHP data?
Newer Shape versions come along with two additional files with the
extensions "prj" and "xml" containing first the projection and second
some metadata. Those are, as far as I know, only supported by V8 of all
the ArcStuff ... If you count as well the indexing files ("sbn"
and "sbx") it totals up to 7 files per layer (more to come?). Almost as
ugly as ArcInfo coverages which are even directories containing a
gazillion of files (!) ... And if you look further, ESRI has a very
nice collection of formats itself: Coverages, E00 (pure fortran!),
Generate, Shape, Personal Geodatabase (Access), Geodatabase (SDE),
ArcSDE V2.x, ArcSDE V3.x/8.x and others and probably more to come. And
i.e. the project files (workspaces) are binary (holy MapInfo ASCII-
Workspaces and holy ASCII MIF/MID which allows even humans to fiddle
around if needed ...).
At the end there is only one answer to that: FME (www.safe.com).
>>>>>>>> and as all ways a voice of sanity in the confusion....
> ... Is a retarded .SHP format just the millstone we, as MapInfo users,
must
> carry?
I imagine that ArcGIS users must have the same problem. If there's no
coordinate
system info associated with a SHP file, how do they get it georegistered
correctly when loaded into an ESRI product? IMHO, it's a mistake not to
include
coordinate system information with spatial data.
As to the lack of font, symbol, pen and brush styles, I think ESRI is
correct
about separating those from the geographic elements. A geographical entity
logically has a one to many relationship with graphic styles, so it makes
sense
to me that graphic style is not a fixed part of the SHP file data.
Information
about that probably belongs in a data file as one or more attributes so it
can
be readily accessed by the DBMS query engine. These same data could be
accessed
in a similar fashion by a thematic mapping function to apply graphic styles.
Externalizing graphic information makes legend creation more modular as
well.
Portability issues are simplified too when style information is not buried
inside a map object's definition.
Regarding the SHP file's becoming the de-facto data interchange standard,
all I
can say is that I'm glad ESRI published the specs. It makes a good point
about
open standards. They were savvy about that too. Now all the government
agencies
that provide data to the public and use ESRI's software have no ethical or
political problems providing data only as SHP files -- that format is an
open
standard. This provides govt. agencies with less reason to develop their own
open standards (note the USGS has even abandoned their ill-fated SDTS
standard
in favor of using ESRI's ArcGrid format in distributing NED data), and they
become increasing dependent on ESRI software, because that's the only one
that
easily produces the de-facto standard. This bias cascades through the
industry
and ESRI multiplies their advantage. Soon the govt. agencies will no longer
have
the people and resources to maintain independent standards, and they'll just
buy
their solutions -- from ESRI.
--
- Bill Thoen
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As far as I know you just have to live with those issues.
If you are lucky the data provider will have created a seperate *.PRJ file
that sits alongside the SHP and contains projection info. This is one that
MapInfo can work with and also the Universal Translator writes out when
creating a shapefile from MapInfo. Thats the first bit - and a crucial one
to be sure - how many hours have I wasted trying to sleauth out the
coordinates from a shapefile ([EMAIL PROTECTED]@#$). Usually I preview it in ArcView
or ArcExplorer and have enough sense to guess from a sample coordinate pair.
Alternately you fish through a seperate metadata file to find the projection
and coordinate info. Or you harass the data provider until they give it up.
With regards to the styling, yes thats a bummer too. There is a nifty
additional optional file in ArcView 3.x called a *.AVL - a legend file -
that defines a style setting or thematically driven setting that loads when
you open the SHP file. In the newfangled Arc8 there is something called a
Layer file - sort of the same idea - an umbrella with settings to sit over
the data in the SHP. Neither of these can be used by non-ESRI tools as far
as I know, but if you could read them and apply their contents in MapInfo
that could be a fix to this annoying non-feature of the direct SHP. As an
aside, SHPs are also approx 50% fatter than TAB (.MAP) with large complex
spatial layers like topographic contours.
I am very interested in more insight on this topic as well - particularly
with regards to Open GIS data formats and standards - the geodata.gov site
is very interesting and some of you know a lot more about the Geospatial One
Stop initiative and also web-based OGC compliant services than I do...I sit
on a state GIS board here in Maine where we are planning to implement a new
state GeoLibrary - and data distribution, standards, and formats are all on
the table. You find SHP files everywhere for downloadable data, and often
those ArcExport files too which have a whole host of their own
peculiarities. At least the SHP files are published and not propietary - I
fear the day when the download will be a Arc...only or other proprietary
format - but open formats can still win. Wish I knew more...
Will
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Will,
Snip>>>>>>>>>>
With regards to the styling, yes thats a bummer too. There is a nifty
additional optional file in ArcView 3.x called a *.AVL - a legend file -
that defines a style setting or thematically driven setting that loads when
you open the SHP file. In the newfangled Arc8 there is something called a
Layer file - sort of the same idea - an umbrella with settings to sit over
the data in the SHP. Neither of these can be used by non-ESRI tools as far
as I know, but if you could read them and apply their contents in MapInfo
that could be a fix to this annoying non-feature of the direct SHP. As an
aside, SHPs are also approx 50% fatter than TAB (.MAP) with large complex
spatial layers like topographic contours.
<<<<<<<<<
I did manage to write some code that read an avl and loaded some basic style
values into arrays for later use (i never got around to finishing the code
that converted the blank objects to styled objects 'on the fly' in Mi but
its 'doable')... If you or anyone else are still interested in this kind of
thing give me a prod and i'll try and finish it off...As I recall, matching
Region styling wasnt too bad (only one or two unmatched pattern fills) but
lines styles was proving difficult with only line weighting and colouring
really 'emulateable'(hence my abandnement of the idea), symbols were also
problematic because of the need to get the fonts installed....
If anyone has a *.lyr file reader (or *.mxd !?!) then i for one would be
keen to see it........
regards
Russell Lawley
geologist
Brit.Geol.Surv
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