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

[Alex Deckmyn]

Jon, 

Identification using ISO codes is a good idea, although I think the old naming scheme shouldn't be broken. But adding functionalities to "map" will always have to be done in a way that keeps backward compatbility, so I'll have to think about a good way to do this. 

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 


From: "Jonathan Callahan" <jonathan at mazamascience.com> 
To: "Alex" <alex.deckmyn at meteo.be> 
Cc: r-package-devel at r-project.org 
Sent: Friday, 31 July, 2015 20:31:30 
Subject: Re: [R-pkg-devel] new maintainer sought for maps packages 

Alex, 
Thank you for addressing the #1 issue with the 'maps' package. I have several clients and colleagues that I have pushed to use R for mapping but it's always embarrassing to say they have to either 1: accept Soviet Union era borders or 2: embrace the complexity of the 'sp' package. 

Updating the world borders and (Oh please!) allowing countries to be identified by ISO-3166-1-alpha2 country codes would hugely improve the utility of the 'maps' package. 

Our efforts with the MazamaSpatialUtils package originated with the outdated world map in the 'maps' package. 

Best Regards, 

Jon 

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Alex Deckmyn < alex.deckmyn at meteo.be > wrote: 


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 

[[alternative HTML version deleted]] 

______________________________________________ 
R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list 
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel 






-- 
Jonathan Callahan, PhD 
Mazama Science 
206-708-5028 
mazamascience.com 


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]