I've just spent a couple of idle weekends getting a version of the S-plus 'maps' library working under R. For those unfamiliar with the maps library, it lets you map a geographical region, split into areas, and optionally colour-fill those areas according to some variable. For example: R> library(maps) R> map("state",c("california","nevada","washington")) draws a line map of those three states. R> map("uk",fill=T,color=pop.colour) draws a map of the uk with counties coloured by the pop.colour vector. The system also supports map projections. You can do this: R> map("state",proj="merc") to draw the map on a mercator projection. I have used the USGS PROJ4.2 projection library, and so there are many projections and options available. I've also added a Great Britain Ordnance Survey grid projection to PROJ4.2, for use with maps of this area. You can also do inverse projections - plot a map with a projection, get locations with locator(), and then inverse-project them to get back to lat-long coordinates. That's all the good news. The bad news is that there's a few problems here and there, mainly related to lines that cross the +180/-180 boundary and to certain projections - an azimuthal projection (i.e. as you would see the earth from space) of the world map doesn't do hidden-line removal of the far side, it just crashes! So I'm looking for interested parties to have a play with the code. Preferably people with some experience of the S/Splus maps library, or anyone with a geographical interest. It may even be worth starting from scratch again and building an R-GIS package from the ground up... Email me with your interest. Barry Rowlingson Maths and Stats Lancaster University Lancaster, UK -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._