[R] [R-pkgs] R maps now for Windows

[Ray Brownrigg]

The original S maps package, previously only available in R on Unix
systems is now available in R for Windows.

maps_2.0-2 and mapdata_2.0-2 (see below) in both source and Windows
binary form (for rw1071) have been uploaded to CRAN, hopefully soon to
appear.

The key aspect of this package which differentiates it from other
GIS related R packages under development is that it is standalone
within R, i.e. it does not rely on the presence of any other
software.

Features are:
1) Built-in databases for usa, state (states of the USA), county
(counties of the USA), world, world2 (Pacific-centric world) and nz.
2) Databases supplied in source form with accompanying software to
generate the binary forms, allowing users to edit the data or add new
databases (basic format is latitude/longitude pairs).
3) A database of world cities (generally >~100,000 population).
4) A companion package called mapdata provides high-resolution versions
of world, world2 and nz, as well as china (provinces) and rivers.
5) A companion package called mapproj provides a variety of map 
   projections (from Doug McIlroy).
6) While being backwards-compatible with the original 'S maps library',
it also has many new features, including:
   - displaying region names on a map,
   - finding the map region containing a given point (point-in-polygon),
   - computing areas of map regions, and
   - interpolating data aggregated over map regions (for statistical maps).

The maps and mapdata packages are maintained by Ray Brownrigg with
generous assistance from Tom Minka.

The mapproj package is available at 
   http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~minka/software/maps/

Ray Brownrigg
Tom Minka
October 2003

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