On 2010-04-12 09:04-0700 David MacMahon wrote: > Sounds (and looks!) interesting, Hez!
I have to agree. I urge everyone here to look at Hez's attachment to get a feel for the possibilities allowed by this powerful new feature. This brings up an important question we should discuss. Is it time to completely update both plmap functionality and example 19? Currently plmap gives us access to just 4 map outlines which are stored in data/cglobe.map data/globe.map data/usa.map data/usaglobe.map. From the "file" command those files are stored in a binary format that appears to be "Atari 68xxx CPX file (version 03e8)" format (whatever that is). As far as I know, no software project other than PLplot stores their map data that way, and obviously users contemplating using PLplot for their mapping needs require access to more than just four maps! Fortunately, there appears to be substantial effort underway to provide open-source GIS (geographical information system) software. See http://opensourcegis.org/ for a list of 247 (!) projects. These projects obviously require map data to work with, and it appears there is a lot of it that is free (see http://data.geocomm.com/). I think it is time that we take advantage of that free map data rather than limiting ourselves to just the four map data files that are currently accessible from PLplot. Ideally the availability of free GIS data (along with changes to plmap to allow access to those data) should allow us to replace example 19 to provide examples of some really high-quality maps that are built directly from free GIS data by PLplot. For example, it would be nice to provide topographic maps of my two favorite volcanos, Olympus Mons and Valles Caldera. (The first is the largest volcano in the solar system, and the second is a personal favorite of mine because I toured it as a boy, and it is near the locale of one of my favorite Westerns by Louis L'Amour). But we don't have to stop with contour maps of volcanos. Please use your imaginations to think of additional attractive maps that we could generate as part of a replacement example 19 if/when we gain access to free GIS data. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
