Thanks Roger. Upgrading from R 2.7.1 helped too! (The maptools version with
that didn't have wrld_simpl). I hadn't realised I had fallen so far behind
on this machine.
Regards,
Sean.

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:58 AM, Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand@nhh.no> wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, Sean Carmody wrote:
>
>  I recently began playing around with the maps package, but am definitely a
>> novice when it comes to geographic data. While the map function is very
>> easy
>> to use, the map data is out of date, particularly when it comes to former
>> Soviet Union countries. I have tried to search the archives to work out
>> how
>> to update the file, but have become rather stuck. I found these
>> instructions: http://spatial.nhh.no/R/etc/world_map_intro.html but could
>> not
>> quite follow them.
>>
>
> Please use the wrld_simpl data set bundled with the maptools package, and
> use your choice of its attributes (see names(wrld_simpl) - probably ISO3) to
> key to your data. See spCbind() methods in maptools for control in
> assigning, and review the sp SpatialPolygonDataFrame class used.
>
> Roger
>
>
>  They did, however, point me to this site
>> http://thematicmapping.org/downloads/world_borders.php which has a more
>> up
>> to date file of country borders. After downloading this file, I managed to
>> read in the shape file using read.shape and then plotted the result using
>> Map2poly and this confirmed that the data was good. However, the
>> read.shape
>> gave me various error messages about extra data in the file and, although
>> I
>> could plot the whole world, I don't know how to identify individual
>> countries. Ideally, I would like to take the downloaded border file data
>> and
>> convert into file formats that the map function can understand. Any
>> suggestions as to how to do this or any alternative approaches would be
>> greatly appreciated. To get an idea of what I am trying to do, this post
>> has
>> examples using the old map data:
>> http://www.stubbornmule.net/2009/07/arms-trade/
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Roger Bivand
> Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
> Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
> Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
> e-mail: Roger.Bivand@nhh.no
>
>


-- 
Sean Carmody

The Stubborn Mule
http://www.stubbornmule.net
http://twitter.com/seancarmody

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