[R-sig-Geo] Coastline data for TM_WORLD_BORDERS 0.2

[Hans-Jörg Bibiko]

Hi,

My task is to draw a projected map (proj=cea, lon_0=25E) based on data coming from

http://mappinghacks.com/data/TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.2.zip (not wrld_simpl)

which should have different colours for political boundaries and coastlines AND some country polygons should be highlighted by a different colour.

My approach is to draw TM_WORLD_BORDERS and on top of it the gshhs coastline data coming from gshhs_h.b. Fine. Even I was able to get rid of the horizontal clipping lines due to my re-centered map, but it turns out that the gshhs and TM_WORLD_BORDERS differs for some regions which disturbs the map a bit.

My question is now if someone here has a coastlines object which is based on TM_WORLD_BORDERS data or know how to generate such one. Of course, my first idea was to use unionSpatialPolygons() but after an hour of calculation time I quit that process, and I'm not quite sure if unionSpatialPolygons() generates the desired coastlines since the function has to use a kind of 'threshold' due to several reasons.

Or does someone know an other approach to draw coastlines and boundaries in different colours AND to be able to colourise some country polygons?

One idea would be to use the gshhs data wbd_borders_h.b instead of TM_WORLD_BORDERS but then I cannot fill a country polygon.

Any hint would help! Many thanks in advance,

--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