[R-pkg-devel] new maintainer sought for maps packages

[Alex Deckmyn]

First of all, I would like to thank Ray for his many years of taking care of maps, mapdata and mapproj, and for his confidence in my taking over. I hope to keep the packages running smoothly. 

I think R-sig-Geo is the best place to discuss future developments and will be posting there soon. As Ray mentioned, I (with his help & feedback) have been preparing an updated world map. I am going to be very cautious, but the many changes in country names (post-1990 Europe!) mean that any package or code that uses maps by calling map('world',region=...) to create a map using country names, could be affected. Maintainers of packages calling "maps" may want to contact me to make sure I don't break anything. In any case, I am currently testing a beta version that includes the old data set as a fall back. 

Alex 

--- 
Dr. Alex Deckmyn e-mail: alex.deckmyn at meteo.be 
Royal Meteorological Institute http://www.meteo.be 
Ringlaan 3, 1180 Ukkel, Belgium tel. (32)(2)3730646 



I have been somewhat surprised by the number of positive responses to my 
message. I have found a candidate for the position of maintainer of the 
maps, mapdata and mapproj packages. I have confidence that Alex Deckmyn 
<alex.deckmyn at meteo.be> will do at least as good a job as I have done in 
this regard. 

The current (recent) releases of the packages still have my name as 
maintainer, but the address specified points to my (now) old work 
address which will autorespond to say I have now retired. However in 
practise, I will still be able to read and respond to such emails for 
the foreseeable future. 

Among other improvements, Alex is working on setting up a more accurate 
"world" database for maps and will submit this once it has been fully 
tested. 

Thanks everyone for your support. 
Ray Brownrigg 

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