Package sp, with classes and methods for spatial data, has version 0.8-1 now released on CRAN. The new version contains a number of incompatible changes w.r.t. 0.7-10, both at the binary level (slot names) and the interface level (class names and functions provided). The motivation for this was moving to a more logical naming structure and less data replication.
The incompatible changes are: ============================ + SpatialRings are now called SpatialPolygons - SpatialPolygons now consist of a list of Polygons, where each Polygons object has one or more (single) Polygon objects. + SpatialRingsDataFrame are now called SpatialPolygonsDataFrame + SpatialLines now consist of a list of Lines objects, where each Lines object has one or more (single) Line objects. + Polygons, Polygon, Lines and Line do not contain projection or bounding box information anymore. Further changes: method "[", plot, show and summary are now present for all classes, and implemented in S4 style. package maptools now depends on sp: + Reading sp objects from shapefiles is now done with functions readShapePoly and readShapeLines Further changes: =============== + by default, axes are not drawn on maps. This saves space, and usually the numerical values shown are little informative, and the titles are obvious (e.g. "x", "y"; "northing", "easting"). + x-axis and y-axis labels can no more be plotted through plot(). [they still can be plotted optionally through spplot()] + for unprojected data, if axes are drawn the values shown are e.g. 35oE, 22oN (o replaced with the degree symbol) and also positive degrees S and W, direction reversed; this further removes the need to add labels "latitude" and "longitude". see http://r-spatial.sourceforge.net/gallery/#fig21.R for an example. + spplot for grids and polygons can now plot categorical variables; see http://r-spatial.sourceforge.net/gallery/#fig21.R for an example. Edzer Pebesma and Roger Bivand -- 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ R-sig-Geo mailing list R-sig-Geo@stat.math.ethz.ch https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo