On 2012-10-04 12:58-0700 phil rosenberg wrote: > I just want to double check that shapefile really the correct format to use for the built in maps. The only concern I have is that it may be slow and memory hungry to read the files because the file only specifies min/max x/y for the entire file. If these files are not intended for the users to see or modify then they can be taylored to best suit the needs of PLplot rather than being "generically useful".
Hi Phil: I have had a quick look at http://shapelib.maptools.org/shp_api.html, and it appears essentially every shape (except null and single point) has a bounding box. So it should be straightforward to read in shapes and select only the ones which are relevant to the area of the map you want to plot with plmap. I would aim just for that simple area selection capability to start. Once you are happy with the plotted results for small shape files where efficiency is not a concern, you might want to implement an optimization that eliminates shapefile rereads for the same shapefile and same plotted area that has been specified before. I can think of several possibilities for such an optimization, and I am sure you can as well. However, I would strongly advise waiting to figure out the specifics of such optimization until later. After all, the usual programming advice is to optimize late in development rather than early, and I think that advice is completely relevant to this case. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
