On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:38:08AM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <[email protected]> flavor, containing: > I am a new user to Xastir. I just installed Linux Mint 10 and installed > Xastir via Synaptic. I got it up and running in less than 5 minutes using an > Internet Server. It seems to be working great, and I see my position on > aprs.fi. My question regards maps. I also have APRSISCE32 running on a > Windows machine, and I love the look of the maps. On Xastir, all of my maps > are line drawings. I have tried to download some online maps on > /Online/teraserver.geo and /Online/USRadar.geo as well as others. All of the > maps are either line drawings or no maps at all. When I resize the view, I > can see the connection to the server in the lower left corner. I'm sure that > it is a package or something that I am missing, but I have no idea what it > is. I want to set this up at Orlando Hamcation at our Linux Booth.
The version of Xastir you can get through synaptic is very old (1.9.4, if I recall correctly) and the main maps it could have gotten from the internet were the Tiger maps. These are no longer available (TIGER/Line on-line maps were served by the US Census, and the server was permanently taken down not long after the Xastir 1.9.6 or 1.9.8 release, I don't remember which). The latest version of Xastir (2.0.0 for the stable release, 2.0.1 for the bleeding-edge CVS version) has access to precisely the same on-line maps that APRSISCE uses (Open Street Maps). These are very pretty and make for a good initial choice. You can't get this version through Synaptic (or "apt" or "aptitude"), you have to build from source. This is primarily because the people who maintain the Debian package are not active Xastir users, do not follow Xastir development, and rarely update that package --- the Xastir developers do not maintain any binary releases, for that matter (it's enough work supporting the code base itself). If you pick through the archives of this mailing list, you should be able to find sufficient instructions for building Xastir from source on Mint. I believe someone posted only in the last couple of hours about it. Here's what Ray Wells said a few hours ago: http://lists.xastir.org/pipermail/xastir/2011-January/019501.html In short, instructions for building on Mint are pretty much the same as those for building on Ubuntu, with one or two minor changes. If you like APRSISCE, you'll find it worthwhile to update to Xastir 2.0.0 or later so you can get at the OpenStreetMaps on-line maps. Not surprised you're unimpressed with the few remaning on-line maps other than Tiger. The Terraserver maps are mostly aerial photos or topo maps. USRadar is just an overlay of current weather radar, and is often devoid of anything interesting to see. When working in situations where internet access is unavailable, Xastir gives you the ability to use locally stored maps of either raster or line variety, but collecting a good set can be a challenge. I'm not sure that README.MAPS has been kept up to date with the current best choices there. Many users have had good luck downloading shapefiles from OpenStreetMaps. There's a slew of good choices, but the work involved in preparing them for use and making them look nice can be a little daunting at first. -- Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/ Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
