[R-sig-Geo] Looking for best practice to share Rdata containing country/prov/county polygons

[Hans-Jörg Bibiko]

Hi,

due to the fact that I'm just converting some free available data-sets  
to SpatialPolygonsList objects containing country/province/county  
polygons (each polygon can be identified by an unique name) I wonder  
if there is a recommendation/example how to store such data in a  
single R object similar to Roger Bivand's wrld_simpl in order to share  
these objects.

The structure should be organized in such a way that the user can  
choose e.g. to:
- show only the national boundary of a country
- show the national boundary plus province ones (admin level 1 - if  
available)
- show the national boundary plus province ones plus county ones  
(admin level
2 - if available)

- show any combination of selected polygons coming from different  
admin levels
- etc.

Should one make usage of several R objects?
How to set up a name attribute  
(COUNTRY:ADMIN_LEVEL_1_NAME:ADMIN_LEVEL_2_NAME)?
Or maybe, how to extend Roger Bivand's wrld resp. wrld_simpl database  
including a chance to name each single polygon representing an island?

Any comments or suggestions?

Kind regards,

--Hans



**********************************************************
Hans-Joerg Bibiko
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Department of Linguistics
Deutscher Platz 6     phone:   +49 (0) 341 3550 341
D-04103 Leipzig       fax:     +49 (0) 341 3550 333
Germany               e-mail:  bibiko at eva.mpg.de