[R-sig-Geo] Editing a shapefile

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 5:31 PM, <BRWIN338 at aol.com> wrote:
> Good Morning:
> I would like to edit the county warning area boundaries  shapefile
> "w_15jl09.shp" downloaded from:
> _http://www.weather.gov/geodata/catalog/wsom/html/cwa.htm_
> (http://www.weather.gov/geodata/catalog/wsom/html/cwa.htm)
>
> Several of the shapefile's polygons contain extremely small "holes" that I
> would like to exclude from my plots. For example, I would like to remove
> slot 2 from the polygon for area 'RIW'  (see below) and save the  results in
> a new shapefile.

 You could either spend ages fiddling about manipulating sp spatial
data objects (which are lists of objects which are lists of vectors of
lists of coordinates, or similar), or you could download and install a
desktop GIS package and do it with a few clicks.

 With Quantum GIS for example, you can load a shapefile, enable
editing, click on points and delete them, even move them around
interactively, then save as a shapefile again.

 Quantum GIS is free, open-source, and crossplatform - www.qgis.org
for info. Other desktop GIS packages are available.

Barry