[R-sig-Geo] Drawing Maps

[Ben Madin]

Kevin,

On 15/12/2010, at 5:01 PM, Wang, Kevin (SYD) wrote:

> My questions:
> *	Does anyone know a good reference where I can learn the basics
> of mappings in general (e.g. what's a shapefile?  Difference bewteen
> MapInfo and ESRI...etc)

This is a big topic - and it will depend a great deal on what you want to do. Get a handle on R first (look at the R website for intro to R etc.) otherwise try Wikipedia and look at the references list. It is an iterative process, like most learning.

> *	Is R better at handling MapInfo or ESRI?

Either / or - Shapefiles are a defacto standard, but it is lacking in some features. readOGR can read both - once they are imported properly into R, I think it is immaterial.

> *	Is there a good reference (book or online article) on drawing
> maps in R?  I found http://medipe.psu.ac.th/~edward/R/MapTools.pdf but
> can't seem to see the read.shape() function in maptools package.

It depends how far you want to go - if you just want to draw maps, you might be better with a GIS package like QGIS or uDig. 

If you have some (not necessarily much) background in statistics and R,  "Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R" is worth every cent. It has code available on line, and is an excellent introduction into the sp package and associated tools.

cheers

Ben