Street Atlas USA
21 messages in this thread
Doug and all,
I just gained a new respect for DeLorme's Street Atlas USA and related
programs. Rudy Tschernich (author of Zeolites of the World) called today and
told me that he has been using Street Atlas in conjunction with "Map Expert"
which is an overlay program allowing one to make notes on an overlay to the
maps of Street Atlas. One can also draw in side roads, trails, pits, etc. to
make your mineral localities. He said that Street Atlas has the same detail as
the state "Atlas & Gazeteers" except there are no contour lines. I've noticed
that the atlases have fairly good detail of back roads and features (few
trails). One can enter the GPS location data and Map Expert will plot the
location on the overlay.
This appears to be a pretty good system for plotting/recording mineral
localities. Especially with the ability to draw in locality info and tie the
locality to the lat/lon from GPS. Also, you can go along a route, clicking on
points turnoffs etc. and it will calculate the mileage. Unfortunately for me,
Map Expert is not available for the Mac. Also, he has been using Global
Explorer which is a map atlas of the world. It has pretty good detail, but not
quite as good as Street Atlas and is actually designed for the traveler with
airline routes and the like.
Along this same line of thinking: I just received (love Christmas!) the Atlas
and Gazeteer of Washington and find it much better than Idaho. Idaho is at
1:250,000 scale and does not have sections, T&R indicated. Washington is at
1:150,000 and has sections and T&R. This larger scale makes the Washington
Atlas a larger book (119 maps as compared to 63 for Idaho) and individual
sections are over 3/8 inch across at that scale. Pretty good detail, hope they
redo Idaho!
Lannyh
Lanny…
Your comments about Street Atlas USA provide me a new perspective…
I have DeLorme's maps of California and know for certain that they make little
distinction between paved roads and goat trails. Not much help when we're
trying to choose motorcycling routes for an ST1100 sport touring bike, thus I
had decided not to bother getting the software. The idea of using it to plot
offroad mineral sites etc makes it worth a second look…
Russ,
The failure of DeLorme to add some real distinctive difference in road
quality/grade can be a pain. I notice they do make an effort to dash some
lines, etc. but a little more would help. It really is fun to go into an area
with a lot of roads where one of them is a major road (pave or not) and the
others are really secondary to it but you can't tell which one on the map is
the main one because of all the intersections, turns etc. But, that is
certainly better then those mountain/logging roads not even being on the map!
Rudy said that he found it better when they didn't put all the roads and trails
on because it made it easier to draw the road, trail, pit or whatever of
interest was there.
Hope they make Map Works for the Mac soon.
Lanny
Hi, Lanny–
That is another advantage to electronic versions I neglected to mention, and
there are likely more I have not thought of. With a little luck, you can turn
your annotations on and off when looking at the map; with a lot of luck, maybe
you can E-mail them to another DeLorme user and thus allow the recipient to use
them easily.
–Doug
Forgive me for barging in here, but I've been researching a problem you may be
able to help solve. The problem is this.
Suppose there are two or three thousand individuals carrying GPS receivers
around the country. Their mission is to inspect manhole covers. Also, suppose
there are millions of automobiles, each with a GPS receiver, passing over
manhole covers. I want the frequency with which automobiles pass over manhole
covers (should I be calling these person-hole covers? Anyway…). If I assign,
from a pallet of 255 colors, the range of possible frequencies, and bring up a
map of the US, I should see various colors indicating the information I want.
Question #1: Is there a current source for the lat/long of manhole covers?
Question #2: Is there a current package that allows me to plot values by
lat/long, over a map?
Any suggestions would be most welcome.
Thanks.
David Stuart.
Hi, David–
Welcome to the forum!
I do not have much of a handle on that problem, though I am not sure I
understand it completely. Why would the fact that the autos have GPS receivers
be relevant?
When you mention assigning colors to frequencies, I assume you talking about
coloring roads on a map according to the frequencies of auto use on each road.
If one could obtain that frequency information, and locations of all manholes,
one could get a good sense of manhole pass-over counts. But where that info may
lurk, I have only the vaguest of notions. Utility companies and traffic
departments seem to be the only likely sources – I do not know where or whether
to find them on the Internet, and whether they would be willing to sell such
info cheaply.
GO BIZFILE offers a "yellow pages" sort of service for most cities in the U.S.
if you want to try calling them all (whew!). Perhaps a call to your local
outfits might produce word of some national clearinghouse they all use?
As for software to plot all this, we have just discovered Map Expert (or
whatever the name is), which may not be in the league of what you need, but
then again I have not met it.
Well, keep watching this space, maybe someone else has a better idea. We have
seen an occasional geographer here. When I get home, my Internet book may list
some geography resources – I may need a reminder to check this.
–Doug
Thanks very much for your reply. This is a very interesting problem I have
distilled into a simple case in order to find some basic answers. The actual
problem I'm trying to solve is rather involved. Still, I appreciate very much
your response.
I'm interested in all mapping software. Ideally, a package with any kind of
geocode reference for roads, buildings, monuments, landmarks, or other items
would be most helpful.
Thanks again.
David Stuart
Hi, David–
I have returned and looked up geography resources on the Internet. None of
the descriptions sound like what you are after, and none seem to be places for
further answers, but just in case:
CIA World Factbook Anon. FTP: ucselx.sdsu.edu
/pub/doc/etext/world.text.Z
Earth (fact book & map) Anon. FTP: nic.funet.fi
/pub/world/*
European Postal Codes Anon. FTP: nic.funet.fi
/pub/doc/mail/stamps/*
Geography Server telnet: martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000
Global Land Information System (geo survey maps of US) telnet: glis.cr.usgs.gov
login: guest
U.S. Geographic Name Server gopher.gsfc.nasa.gov
Zip Codes of the U.S. Anon. FTP: oes.orst.edu
/pub/data/zipcode
–Doug
Hi Doug,
Actually that overlay program is called Map Expert (apparently) (not Map Works
as I wrote), it isn't available for the Mac (yet) so I can't actually look it
up. It would be likely that the overlay would be saved as a file that could be
sent anywhere files can travel.
I wonder if one had Street Atlas but not Map Expert if the file could be used
in printing a map (an overlay perhaps to a paper copy of a Street Atlas map) if
it could be saved in a more common format like Freehand or Illustrator (or even
EPS).
We are slowly getting to real useful tools.
Lanny
Hi, Lanny–
With Windows, I can select a printer driver for a printer I do not have, but
which is widely useful, like HPGL (HP Plotter), and print to a file. That HPGL
file can then be sent to others and is then useful in many advanced word
processors and other applications as a graphic. Perhaps I can do EPS the same
way. It is a bit clumsy in that the first time I must install the driver from
the installation diskette, but once set up, I can repeat it easily. This
driver-to-file trick should work for most any Windows application, whether it
provides methods or not, inlcuding Map Expert (or whatever).
–Doug
Hi Doug, Never actually thought of doing it that way, but it would
work the same on a Mac, although it could be difficult getting the
printer drivers.
Apparently, some programs can open and manipulate EPS files and some
can only print them. So far, I've used them, generally don't like
them because the tend to be huge.
I called De Lorme today (1-800-452-5931) and the salesrep didn't think
a Mac version of Map Expert was in the works. Hope she is wrong!
>> ….salesrep didn't think a Mac version of Map Expert was in the works. <<
Lanny —
Better stuff than MapExpert is on the way. A software company is
putting USGS topo's on CDROM which will be readable by Macs. They are
sending me some info but I was asked not to post any info on who the
company is at least till I talk to their marketing guy who should be
back next week.
If anyone is planning to buy a Trimble ScoutMaster soon, let me know.
I have some info on why to buy now and the availability of Mac
software for the ScoutMaster.
— Bill
Bill,
That sounds interesting. It is about time, hopefully it will be done at a price
us poor working stiffs can afford. We await your posting more information when
available.
Having just bought a Scout, couldn't possible buy a ScoutMaster, but am
interested in the information.
Lanny
Lanny —
Hopefully,I will have some more info on the topo map CDROM next week.
Two of the main features on the ScoutMaster haven't been implemented yet and
when they are, there will be a price increase. Trimble will update the ones
shipped before then for free. The software for transferring data to & from a
Mac is ready now and the first Mac > ScoutMaster I/O cables should be delivered
next week. There are no plans to ever do the Scout-It-Out software for the Mac
but 3rd party vendors are working on more powerful software than Scout-It-Out.
— Bill
That's because EPS files are a subset of PostScript, and some EPS files are
actually structured even further into stnadards such as the Adobe Illustrator
file format. Unfortunately, this blurs the distinction between the formats.
There are ways to turn general PostScript (the most super-set) into other
standard, editable file formats, like AI EPS, DXF or plotter-language HPGL, but
they require specialized tools. If you ever need this done, keep me in mind,
I'm a master of conversions and file formats – it's what I do for a living.
John,
Thanks. If needed I shall call.
I have a program called Graphic Converter that converts a large list of DOS,
Amiga, etc. formats to each other and Mac compatibility, but don't recall that
it can touch EPS. So far it has been a big help (made it possible for my Mac to
read the USGS CD-ROM of mining photos (USGS DDS-12) which was made for DOS
machines. And it has been helpful making the GIF files to upload here.
Speaking of GIF, saw a message (actually a lot of them) in one of the Mac.COM
Newsgroups that Compuserve has decided to require everyone to pay royalties for
using the GIF format. Amazing how there hasn't been anything on Compuserve
about this.
Lanny
The Graphics forums have been abuzz with the Unisys-Compuserve-LZW-GIF issue.
The GIF business is quite a brou-ha-ha, and I don't think all the dust has
settled. There has been a lot of info on CIS, but it's in the graphics
developer -type forums. In short, Unisys claims a patent on a data compression
scheme, GIF uses it, and Unisys has CIS against the wall, and CIS may start
exacting a royalty from commercial products that use GIF files. Freeware is
exempt.
John,
Apparently it won't be long until decisions are made, then we will see
something happen at our level one way or another. There must be some effect on
us if we are going to send GIF files up and down the CIS connection.
Lanny
>>Speaking of GIF, saw a message (actually a lot of them) in one of the Mac.COM
Newsgroups that >>Compuserve has decided to require everyone to pay royalties
for using the GIF format. Amazing how >>there hasn't been anything on
Compuserve about this.
Lanny —
CIS isn't going to require everyone to pay royalties for using the GIF format.
The following is a paragraph from the GIF Developer Agreement Update I found on
the CIS World Wide Web page, (HTTP:\\WWW.COMPUSERVE.COM).
>>CompuServe remains committed to keeping open the GIF 89a specification both
within CompuServe and >>in areas outside CompuServe. CompuServe continues to
strongly support the use of the GIF >>specification in the entire online
community including the Internet and World Wide Web. This >>agreement will be
transparent to end-users and will not result in any charges for people using
>>viewers or transmitting GIF images.
>>Tim Oren,
>>CompuServe Vice President, Future Technology
— Bill
Bill,
When the dust settles, the royalty business will reach us all to some extent.
That is a neat trick–let everyone use it for years, then start talking about
the patent and go for the royalty!
Lanny