| Re: Better (updated) political boundaries on maps? [message #86317] |
Fri, 25 October 2013 12:18  |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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AMS writes:
>
> I know there are improvements over the standard IDL shoreline database (e.g. GSHHS as written about by David here: http://www.idlcoyote.com/map_tips/gshhs.html ), but is there a similar better possibility for political boundaries?
>
> I ask as the database within IDL is quite outdated and if you want to make a region map showing e.g. eastern Africa, several countries (South Sudan, Eritrea) don't seem to exist on it. There are also some incomplete borders (e.g. between Saudi Arabia and Oman/Yemen). Maybe there are other issues elsewhere in the world. A quick look shows Montenegro is also missing.
>
> For publication/presentation graphics for use in material produced by government-affiliated researchers and institutions, using outdated political boundaries is not ideal.
>
> For an example, try running the following commands and comparing to a recent atlas or Google Earth:
>
> map_set,limit=[-10,15,35,55]
> map_continents,/hires
> map_continents,/countries
>
> I know some countries (e.g. South Sudan) have been fairly recently recognised, and some such as Kosovo (also missing) are not entirely internationally recognised, but others such as Eritrea and Montenegro became independent in 1991 and 2006 respectively. Interestingly the Czech Republic and Slovakia are shown as separate countries although this happened in 1993, more recent than Eritrea... And I understand ExelisVis might not want to make political statements about
which borders it considers, but surely some update is overdue here.
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> I contacted ExelisVis support about this last week but didn't hear back yet.
>
> This appears to be an issue in both IDL 7.x and 8.x.
>
> If there's no workaround, can this be considered a bug report? ;)
Here is a reference from about 2008. I haven't used it, but it is worth
a look, probably:
http://thematicmapping.org/downloads/world_borders.php
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.idlcoyote.com/
Sepore ma de ni thue. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
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