[R-sig-Geo] Define aliases in shapefiles

[Arnaud Mosnier]

Barry and Rainer,

It seems that aliases are stored when a layer file (.lyr) is created by
ArcGIS and this file is not read by other GIS programs such as QGIS (QGIS
have is own "style" file .qml).

Arnaud

2015-04-09 7:50 GMT-04:00 Rainer M Krug <Rainer at krugs.de>:

> Barry Rowlingson <b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 7:53 PM, Arnaud Mosnier <a.mosnier at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Dear useRs,
> >>
> >> I am searching for a way to break the 10 character limit of the field
> names
> >> in shapefiles created using for example the writeOGR function from the
> >> rgdal package.
> >>
> >> On way could be to define aliases for field names, but I am not aware
> of a
> >> function allowing me to do that.
> >
> >  Are aliases an ArcGIS thing for shapefile names? I can only see vague
> > references on the internet to something like that. Do you create field
> > name aliases in ArcGIS? Are they saved with the shapefile or with the
> > ArcGIS file? Do you get a foo.shp.xml file that is keeping this extra
> > metadata around? Perhaps we could reverse-engineer that and create it
> > in R.
> >
> >  Standards-compliant shapefiles can only have 10-character field names.
> >
> >  You could use another file format, such as GML or Spatialite, as long
> > as whatever you are saving these for can read them.
>
> There is always the possibility of a homegrown version, which should not
> be to difficult to implement. As soon as the shape file has been loaded,
> you can change the field names, and before you save it, you could change
> them back. The longer field names could be saved in a file.
>
> Rainer
>
>
> >
> > Barry
> >
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>
> --
> Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation
> Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany)
>
> Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
> Stellenbosch University
> South Africa
>
> Tel :       +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>

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