[R-sig-Geo] maps showing post-Soviet states?

[Spencer Graves]

       Thanks to Gilles Leduc, Greg Snow, Thomas Adams, Barry 
Rowlingson, and Michael Sumner for their replies.  For the archives, in 
case someone else might find this in the archives, I will record here 
two solutions to my problem.


       1.  Michael's reply was the simplest, especially since it worked 
with "map" adding "add=TRUE" and "col" to the plot:

map(xlim=c(10, 90), ylim=c(30, 60))
library(raster)
ct <- getData("countries")
plot(subset(ct, NAME %in% c("Azerbaijan", "Uzbekistan", "Tajikistan",
                             "Turkmenistan", "Croatia")),
             add=TRUE, col='red')


       2.  Before I saw Michael's reply, I had solved the problem with 
much greater effort:  (1) I downloaded a zip file for each country from 
"www.diva-gis.org/datadown", as suggested by Gilles. (2) Unzipping 
produced folders with names like "..\TWN_adm" and files with names 
beginning "TWN_adm0", "TWN_adm1", and "TWN_adm2" and extensions bdf, 
prj, sbn, sbx, shp, and shx.  I could then get what I wanted with code 
like the following:


Taiwan0 <- readShapeSpatial("..\TWN_adm0")
map(xlim=c(100, 150), ylim=c(10, 30))
plot(Taiwan0, add=TRUE, col='blue', lwd=3, fill=FALSE)


       Again, thanks for the replies.


On 7/1/2014 4:38 PM, Michael Sumner wrote:
> An example:
>
> library(raster)
> ct <- getData("countries")
> plot(subset(ct, NAME %in% c("Azerbaijan", "Uzbekistan", "Tajikistan",
> "Turkmenistan", "Croatia"))
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 9:09 AM, Michael Sumner <mdsumner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 7:56 AM, Thomas Adams <tea3rd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Spencer,
>>>
>>> Maybe I'm not sure what you're asking but here
>>> http://www.gadm.org/version1
>>> are current shapefiles by country. The highlighting (selection) canals  be
>>> done in GRASS GIS, QGIS, GMT
>>>
>>>
>>   raster::getData can read this. See here http://www.gadm.org/ and
>>
>> library(raster)
>> ?getData
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Tom
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 2:29 PM, Spencer Graves <
>>> spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>        What would you suggest I do to create a world map highlighting
>>>> Taiwan and post-Soviet states like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
>>>> Turkmenistan, and Croatia?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        The region argument in maps::map won't recognize any of these, and
>>>> my literature search identified hundreds of packages with some spatial /
>>>> geographical / mapping content.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        Thanks,
>>>>        Spencer Graves
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> R-sig-Geo mailing list
>>>> R-sig-Geo at r-project.org
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Michael Sumner
>>> Software and Database Engineer
>>> Australian Antarctic Division
>>> Hobart, Australia
>>> e-mail: mdsumner at gmail.com