Dear all,
I would like to employ a European map in a presentation. My idea was to
use:
library(mapdata)
map("worldHires", c("Austria", "Switzerland",
"Germany"))
where I include all countries from my analysis as a vector of character
strings like in the example above. Unfortunately, I was unable to
specify the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) or the Czech
Republic.
Initially, I thought I misspelled the country names. To avoid this
obvious error, I checked within 'mapdata_2.0-14.tar.gz' the file
'worldHires.names'. To my surprise, the spelling was not the source of
the error - it was rather the case that those countries were not
included.
Did some people experience similar problems? And if yes: how did you
proceed?
Thanks,
Roland
P.S. my version of R is: R 2.1.0 on WinXP
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> From: "Rau, Roland" <Rau at demogr.mpg.de> > > I would like to employ a European map in a presentation. My idea was to > use: > library(mapdata) > map("worldHires", c("Austria", "Switzerland", "Germany")) > > where I include all countries from my analysis as a vector of character > strings like in the example above. Unfortunately, I was unable to > specify the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) or the Czech > Republic. > Initially, I thought I misspelled the country names. To avoid this > obvious error, I checked within 'mapdata_2.0-14.tar.gz' the file > 'worldHires.names'. To my surprise, the spelling was not the source of > the error - it was rather the case that those countries were not > included. > > Did some people experience similar problems? And if yes: how did you > proceed? >Unfortunately the world databases for the maps package are very old (early 1990's) and have not been updated since, except for minor typographical errors in country names. Note that Czechoslovakia is there (as is USSR!). Also, it currently satisfies my needs, which is why I don't have the resources to update it. I suggest you start with the maptools package, but as I understand it, you need to also find some appropriate shapefile data. [Other respondents may improve upon this suggestion.] Regards, Ray Brownrigg maps package maintainer
Ray Brownrigg wrote:> Unfortunately the world databases for the maps package are very old > (early 1990's) and have not been updated since, except for minor > typographical errors in country names. Note that Czechoslovakia is > there (as is USSR!). Also, it currently satisfies my needs, which is > why I don't have the resources to update it.> I suggest you start with the maptools package, but as I understand it, > you need to also find some appropriate shapefile data. [Other > respondents may improve upon this suggestion.]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Geographical_data provides some links, including one to: http://www.esri.com/data/download/basemap/index.html permitting the downloading of various layers as shapefiles that can be read and handled by the maptools package. If you choose just country boundaries, you'll get a lat-long rectangle, including the countries you want (and (parts of) countries you don't). You may need to subset your requests, because the website restricts how much you can choose at one go. Please contact me off-list or move this to the R-sig-geo list for more information. Roger -- Roger Bivand Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43 e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no