Richard, GNIS files, the way XASTIR reads them are just pipe delimited text files. Theres' no dbf for them.
Tom, That's the conclusion I came too also. I'm going to gen up a perl script to translate the format, but it won't help the zoom level issue. I thought of a crippled up work around but it still requires that I can find the population numbers from _somewhere_. When I get the crappyGNIS_2_previousGNIS.pl written, I'll see if anyone wants to use it. Is there a document or table in the source maybe or in a config file that specifies the zoom level breaks for GNIS files? 73 de Troy, KC0MIC -----Original Message----- From: Tom Russo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 7:54 PM To: Richard Polivka, N6NKO Cc: Troy M. Campbell; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Xastir] GNIS files On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 07:41:24PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> flavor, containing: > If you need to dig into the .dbf file to get the headers, there are > some programs out there that can do it. OpenOffice Calc can parse the > .dbf file and show the metadata headers so the .dbfawk file can be written. GNIS files are not shapefiles, they're just plain text with one line per feature. Yes, xastir uses the population size to select zoom levels for populated places. I, too, noticed that the GNIS file format changed (for the worse) some time ago when I tried to download the one for Alaska a few months ago. But that's all I noticed, since I didn't really need it and hadn't the time to figure it all out. AFAICT, there is no place to get the GNIS files in the old format with that field available, and there is no comparable field that can be used to select populated places by population --- we'd just have to display them all at all zoom levels, and this would require a code change in xastir to support the new format (without breaking old format, because if we do that then we'd all be forced to download the newer, less functional data). > Troy M. Campbell wrote: > >All, > > > >For some reason I decided to start from scratch with all my maps, > >spent a week compiling the latest tiger files, downloading dbfawks, > >shapefiles, tweeked this and that, etc till I was pretty tired of it. > >Then "standardized" the zoom levels to get the rendering to appear as > >fast as possible while being generic as possible. > > > >The last task was get the GNIS files for pop places, historical > >places and some others from > >http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm > >. > >Imagine my dismay when I found out that they are in a format that > >xastir won't read. > > > >No problem, that's why perl exists. Oooops, not only did the format > >change, but they dropped the "estimated population" field. I'm pretty > >sure that xastir uses this to pick what to show at what zoom level. > > > >Does anyone know where the files can be gotten in the original format... > >(New data, old format)? > > > >Or has anyone overcome the problem already? > > > >73 de Troy, KC0MIC > >_______________________________________________ > >Xastir mailing list > >[email protected] > >http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Xastir mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir -- Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/ Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM "And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" --- The Tick _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
