[R-sig-Geo] which data format should I buy

[Jan Wijffels]

Hi,

I'm a newbie to spatial statistics and I'm considering to buy a map of Belgium with its communes. If I go to the website of the national geographical institute of Belgium (http://www.ngi.be/FR/FR1-5-2.shtm or http://www.ngi.be/NL/NL1-5-2.shtm if you speak Dutch), I see it offers a digital ArcInfo dataset and also a DWG formatted dataset for 300 euros. 
My objective is to make some kind of plot like in Rnews Volume 5/2, November 2005, Figure 3 on page 12 (http://www.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2005-2.pdf) but not for North Carolina but for Belgium and later on to do some more advanced spatial statistics. Can I do this with the ArcInfo or the DWG file offered at that website or do I really need a ESRI shapefile to do that kind of plotting as explained in Rnews?

thanks in advance,
Jan Wijffels
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