On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 03:51:12PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> flavor, containing: > When I download the new new Missouri counties for example do I need to > keep both the Polygons and Polylines files?
Only if you want both line and polygon data (which is to say "yes, probably"). Polylines are things like roads, streams, railroads, etc. Polygons are things like parks, forests, golf courses, lakes, reservoirs, etc. Since they contain completely different information that is rendered in completely different ways, they're both in general necessary for a complete picture of the area. The shapefile format is limited to containing only one type of data (point, line, or area) at a time, so the two types of features are in different sets of files. > On Sep 24, 2008, at 2:56 PM, Tom Russo wrote: > > > On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 02:38:08PM -0500, we recorded a bogon- > > computron collision of the <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> flavor, containing: > >> On the county files I think you are correct. I'm now downloading the > >> new county files (2 or 3 anyway) and plan to play with them a bit. I > >> would really like the smaller roads to go away as I zoom out, it gets > >> awfully crowded on that screen when every single lane, dirt road and > >> path is rendered at every level. > > > > Hmmm. The TIGER dbfawk files are already set to do just that. > > Perhaps > > you don't have "Enable Map Levels" turned on in the Map menu? > > That's the > > thing that tells xastir to pay attention to zoom levels when > > rendering. > > I have no idea why that's even optional except that when it was > > implemented > > there were probably reasons not to enable it. It used not to be the > > default, > > either. Anyhow, if you don't have that checked, then check it > > because it's > > what you want --- no amount of tweaking of the dbfawk file will help > > the clutter unless it's enabled. > > > > If you *DO* have that enabled and still see every single road at every > > single zoom level, something else is very wrong. > > > >> The other thing I want to play with is coloring the county boarders, > >> Platte county and Clay county in Missouri are my primary concern and > >> if I give each a different color boarder it will help me a little. > > > > I do not believe you can tweak that. See, the border lines aren't > > even > > really identifiable in the TIGER/Line data. If I recall correctly, > > the > > lines that make up the county borders have no CFCC code --- I can't > > check > > that for sure from work, though, only on my home machine (where I > > have a > > GIS program that'll help me query attributes of lines more easily). > > > > Since there's no CFCC code to help you identify that some particular > > line is > > a county boundary, there's no easy way in the DBFAWK file to choose > > a special > > color for it. > > > > Also, the county boundary lines would be in the "polylines" file, > > not the > > "polygons" file, because the counties aren't defined as big polygons > > (again, > > because those boundary lines don't have the proper attributes that > > would have > > been needed to assemble the closed polygons from the raw TIGER/Line > > data). > > > > Your better bet might be to use the NOAA county files (normally used > > for > > weather alerts) to outline your counties in distinctive colors. > > What I > > do is to make symlinks of from the /usr/local/share/xastir/Counties > > directory > > (which is only used for weather alerts) into the > > /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/counties directory (a directory I made > > under the > > maps directory, and which can be used for stuff other than alerts). > > Then, > > in the directory with the symlinks, I make per-file DBFAWK files > > that render > > the counties in some custom way. I copy the > > signature-based files in /usr/local/share/xastir/config (e.g. > > /usr/local/share/xastir/config/nwsc_ddmmyy.dbfawk for the counties > > file) to > > the maps/counties directory, rename it to match the associated > > counties > > file and then edit it to fit. That way the alerts continue to work > > using the > > unmolested nwsc_ddmmyy.dbfawk file in the config directory, but the > > always-on > > maps use a different one. Here's what I mean: > > > >> ls -l /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/counties > > total 10 > > lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 27 Jul 7 13:43 c.dbf@ -> ../../ > > Counties/c_11mr07.dbf > > -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2597 Jul 7 13:44 c.dbfawk > > lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 27 Jul 7 13:43 c.shp@ -> ../../ > > Counties/c_11mr07.shp > > lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 27 Jul 7 13:43 c.shx@ -> ../../ > > Counties/c_11mr07.shx > > [...etc...] > > > > Here, I've linked the NOAA counties file in Counties/c_11mr07.* to > > files named > > "c.*" in the "counties" directory, and made a custom dbfawk > > "c.dbfawk" to go > > with it. That c.dbfawk file differs from the > > /usr/local/share/xastir/config/nwsc_ddmmyy.dbfawk file by having a > > different > > color outline, fill style (in this case, unfilled) and line width. > > > > You could customize your own by having special rules that give > > special colors > > to counties of particular interest. To see an example of a dbfawk > > file that > > does special coloring based on named shapes, take a look at my > > dbfawk file > > that is meant to go with the US National Atlas "statesp020" > > shapefile. It's > > downloadable from http://www.swcp.com/~russo/shape_web/ in the > > "Miscellaneous" > > section. > > > > -- > > 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 > > "Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." -- R. > > Bach -- 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 "Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." -- R. Bach _______________________________________________ Xastir mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
