Mapping Hacks

Java-Based Desktop Mapping with Openmap #66

Chapter 6, Mapping on Your Desktop

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HACK

After the first three lines, this dialog is all about cartographic symboliza-

tion—picking the colors your data will draw in. The important thing to

know is that default values are filled in for everything, so you just need to

fill in the locations of the data set components. If you saved the data using

the directory structure I used, your .shp file path will be /geodata/us/country-

wide/states/statesp020.shp. Similarly, your .dbf path will be /geodata/us/coun-

trywide/states/statesp020.dbf, and .shx will be /geodata/us/countrywide/

states/statesp020.shx. Enter these values and press OK. After a few seconds,

the U.S. states should draw on your map in (almost) exactly the right places,

as illustrated in Figure 6-23.

Hacking the Hack: Preserve Your Settings

That was exciting, but as soon as you quit Openmap, the U.S. States layer is

gone. You’ll probably want to add this layer to the basic ones that are

always available in the program (if you live in the U.S.). The program

doesn’t have a save function, but you can program this layer into

Openmap’s startup file. Open your openmap.properties file again. This

time, search for

openmap.layers=. This is where you specify what data

should show up on your map. The rest of the file consists entirely of prop-

erties that describe the location of datafiles and how they should ...