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| =Natural Earth=
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| Marble currently uses the very old and outdated MWDBII dataset for vector map outlines and we really need to replace it with more up-to-date data. However, MWDBII has two key advantages, it is very compact in size enabling Marble to ship it by default, and the individual nodes have a zoom level value which speeds up drawing.
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| The [http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ Natural Earth data set] is a "public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software." This data set seems ideal as a replacement for the MWDBII.
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| Advantages:
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| * Free / Public Domain data
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| * Regularly updated
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| * Wide variety of political and geographic features
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| * Available at 3 different scales: 1:10m 1:50m and 1:110m
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| * All feature nodes at same scale are matched
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| * Data attributes such as country code, population, relative magnitude, etc
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| Disadvantages:
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| * Is in Shapefile format which is space inefficient
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| * No per node zoom level attribute
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| * Different scale datasets do not match so cannot efficiently be used together for zooming
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| The 1:10m dataset seems ideal as the base map in Marble as it provides a higher level of detail than the current MWDBII. The 1:110m dataset seems ideal for use in a country selector widget. The 1:50m dataset being less detailed than the MWDBII is probably not useful to Marble.
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| Using the data in the default shapefile format is not considered desirable however:
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| * No shapefile format support in Marble (yet), would have to rely on an external library or write our own
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| * Space inefficient (14Mb vs 2.6Mb for MWDBII)
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| * No zoom level attribute or any node level attributes
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| * Vector level attributes are stored in .dbf format which adds complexity to implementing shapefile support
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| The ideal solution would therefore be to convert the Natural Earth data into a more efficient file format that includes a zoom level attribute
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| As you say, there's the two approaches that could work for the lightweight
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| default layer:
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| a) Convert just the required NE datasets to pnt format, either merging the 3
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| scale levels into a single file with just 3 detail levels, or use Douglas-
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| Peucker on the 1:10m files to create the required detail levels
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| b) Implement an internal lightweight shapefile parser without dbf support and
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| ship only the required NE datasets.
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| Some pros/cons to consider:
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| The 1:10m country file is 6.55MB and contains 533,202 points = 12.28
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| bytes/point compared to the PNT which is 745KB and contains 127,246 points =
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| 5.85 bytes/point, which would suggest the NE data in PNT format would be half
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| the size, so 6 MB in total. This could probably be further reduced by a light
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| application of Douglas-Peucker.
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| The NE shapefiles have been carefully processed so shared borders and
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| overlapping features like rivers match exactly and other such niceties,
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| applying the Douglas-Peucker algorithm might affect that.
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| A lightweight shapefile parser would allow users/apps to load other
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| shapefiles.
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| We would have to reconvert and check the data every time there's a new NE
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| release which could be a lot of effort, but an automated shp2pnt script could
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| prove useful to allow apps/users to display their own shapefiles in a simple
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| way.
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| Overall, it seems the best approach for the updating the lightweight layer is
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| indeed to convert the shapefiles to PNT format, provided the D-H algorithm can
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| be deployed in a way to mark each point with a detail level rather than just
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| throwing the points away.
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| For the heavier vector layer with attributes, rather than just implementing a
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| shapefile importer based on shapelib (a C library), it might be better to
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| implement an GDAL/OGR importer which would import any vector format and is a
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| C++ library. That would depend on packaging weight and difficulty, so needs
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| more investigation, but that's for another day.
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| Cheers!
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| John.
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| <pre>
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| Key Natural Earth data files from v1.2, recent updates to 1.3 not included.
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| 1:110m 1:50m 1:10m
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| ------ ----- -----
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| Admin level 0 countries 172 KB 1.36 MB 6.55 MB
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| Admin level 0 land borders 39 KB 301 KB 896 KB
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| Admin level 0 sea borders 12 KB 40 KB 79 KB
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| Admin level 0 disputed 40 KB 157 KB
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| Admin level 1 regions 39 KB 339 MB 13.9 MB *
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| Admin level 1 land borders 16 KB 60 KB 4.82 MB
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| Coastlines 79 KB 883 KB 2.15 MB
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| Rivers 19 KB 420 KB 3.29 MB
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| Lakes 10 KB 286 KB 786 MB
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| Glaciers 13 KB 208 KB 1.23 MB
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| Dateline 18 KB 18 KB 18 KB
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| Playas 18 KB 106 KB
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| Ice Shelves 105 KB 211 KB
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| Minor Islands 449 KB
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| Reefs 171 KB
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| ------- ------- ---------
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| 417 KB 4.08 MB 34.03 MB
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| * level 1 regions are USA/Canada only at 110m and 50m, but whole world at 10m,
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| perfect for KGeography use :-)
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| Other useful files:
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| Physical Features Land 146 KB 1.50 MB 692 KB
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| Physical Features Sea 348 KB 836 KB 836 MB
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| Populated Places 347 KB 1.48 MB
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| Urban Areas 439 KB 3.48 MB
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| Bathmetry 11.64 MB
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| </pre>
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| Datasets:
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| Countries
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| – matched boundary lines and polygons with names attributes for countries and
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| sovereign states. Includes dependencies (French Polynesia),
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| map units (U.S. Pacific Island Territories) and
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| sub-national map subunits (Corsica versus mainland Metropolitan France).
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| Disputed areas and breakaway regions
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| From Kashmir to the Elemi Triangle, Northern Cyprus to Western Sahara.
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| First order admin (provinces, departments, states, etc.)
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| – internal boundaries and polygons for all but a few tiny island nations. Includes names attributes and some statistical groupings of the same for smaller countries.
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| Populated places
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| – point symbols with name attributes. Includes capitals, major cities and towns, plus significant smaller towns in sparsely inhabited regions. We favor regional significance over population census in determining rankings.
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| Urban polygons
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| – derived from 2002-2003 MODIS satellite data.
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| Parks and protected areas
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| * US Only
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| * Don't use, maybe user download layer
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| Pacific nation groupings
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| – boxes for keeping these far-flung islands tidy.
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| Water boundary indicators
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| – partial selection of key 200-mile nautical limits, plus some disputed, treaty, and median lines.
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| Coastline
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| – ocean coastline, including major islands. Coastline is matched to land and water polygons.
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| Land
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| – Land polygons including major islands
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| Ocean
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| – Ocean polygon split into contiguous pieces.
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| Minor Islands
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| – additional small ocean islands ranked to two levels of relative importance.
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| Reefs
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| – major coral reefs from WDB2.
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| Physical region features
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| – polygon and point labels of major physical features.
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| Rivers and Lake Centerlines
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| – ranked by relative importance. Includes name and line width attributes. Don’t want minor lakes? Turn on their centerlines to avoid unseemly data gaps.
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| Lakes
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| – ranked by relative importance, coordinating with river ranking. Includes name attributes.
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| Glaciated areas
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| – polygons derived from DCW, except for Antarctica derived from MOA. Includes name attributes for major polar glaciers.
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| Antarctic ice shelves
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| – derived from 2003-2004 MOA. Reflects recent ice shelf collapses.
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| Bathymetry
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| – nested polygons at 0, -200, -1,000, -2,000, -3,000, -4,000, -5,000, -6,000, -7,000, -8,000, -9,000,and -10,000 meters. Created from SRTM Plus.
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| Geographic lines
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| – Polar circles, tropical circles, equator, and International Date Line.
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| Graticules
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| – 1-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, and 30-degree increments. Includes WGS84 bounding box.
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| tk
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| Using GeoPainter and GeoDataLineString ("libgeodata"):
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| * Apply Douglas-Peuker dynamicallyin GeoDataLineString class to set Detail Level
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| * When GeoDataLineString modified (add/del point) set dirty flag
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| * When node accessed for drawing, Dirty flag would trigger D-P to calculate detail level and unset dirty flag
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| * Would benefit all vector formats, e.g. kml, ppx, shp
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| New PNT format:
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| * 1st integer (32 bit): Latitude in arcseconds
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| highest bit indicates new polygon starts: header information has to be read from 3rd integer
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| * 2nd integer (32 bit): Longitude in arcseconds
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| * optional 3rd integer: feature key
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| highest bit feature geometry (line or ring).
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| 1:10 dataset in PNT2 format:
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| * each point takes 64 bits/8 bytes
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| * the start of polygon which takes 96 bits
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| * roughly 533,202 x 8 bytes = 4 Mb for the country borders alone
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| * If that's too much to ship, then ship the 1:50 dataset and download the 1:10 asap
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| Metadata file:
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| * convert / filter dbf into our own format
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| Rather than the Geonames ID, we could just use the Natural Earth object ID,
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| then a look-up file/table that matches the NE ID to the ISO / FIPS / whatever
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| code (NE provides this in the metadata) and Geonames ID (which we would have
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| to provide). This would allow look-ups via whatever code or ID is available,
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| and we wouldn't be reliant on Geonames IDs staying constant.
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| So required work is:
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| 1) Fix GeoPainter LinearRings which contain a pole not rendered correctly
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| - Torsten knows, problem will fill in flat map needs to create polygon if closed and crosses dateline once only
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| 2) Implement Douglas-Peuker reduction in GeoDataLineString
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| - big investigation
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| 3) New PNT file format definition (with a different name, MBL?)
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| - existing serial format from geodata???
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| 4) Metadata file format definition (could just be csv or xml? or sqlite?)
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| 5) New GeoData PNT2 file loading code (convert olf data).
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| 6) shp2mbl script to convert shp to new formats (using Perl::shp? there's
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| shp2xxx scripts out there we could copy?), including matching to Geonames ID
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| 7) split files into 'ship with', 'download asap', 'ghns'@
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| Later add simple shapefile loading to GeoData, maybe with attibute layer?
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| GHNS:
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| * can it download layers as well as themes?
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