[R-sig-Geo] map tiles

[Barry Rowlingson]

Markus Loecher wrote:
> Dear Rgeo experts,
> what would be the most efficient way of displaying Google map tiles in R and
> overlaying lat/lon points ? It seems that already the first elementary step
> of importing and displaying png pictures is difficult to do in R ?
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated,
> 

  It wouldn't be too hard to write some code that grabbed the google map 
tiles for a plot area, converted to some raster format and displayed 
them in an R plot window. However, have you read the google map api:

"""The API may be used only for services that are generally accessible 
to consumers without charge. Accordingly, You may not use the API for 
any service that requires a subscription or other restricted access, or 
for which a fee is charged."""

  I reckon having an R plot on your desktop is pretty much restricted 
access. Google's map data is intended for public web sites. It might 
also fall foul of:

"""You may not copy, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, 
translate, modify or make derivative works of the imagery, in whole or 
in part."""

  Now, OpenStreetMap maps are a different story...

www.openstreetmap.org

Barry