Re: [Paddlewise] Santa brought me...

From: Darryl <Darryl.Johnson_at_sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:47:17 -0500
> On Dec 27, 2007 4:35 PM, John Fereira <jaf30_at_cornell.edu> wrote:
> 
> >
> > I have also been building my own maps using available GIS data and
> > have created some pretty good base maps with street/park/hydrology
> > and a few other features.  It's a pretty tedious process though.
> 
> 
> Navigational charts produced by the U.S. Government are not copyrighted and
> are available free of charge on the Internet and also from companies which
> have made DVDs from this data and sell those relatively cheaply. Charts from
> Canada are under a copyright owned by the government of Canada and are not
> freely available.
> 

One can only hope that the Canadian Hydrographic Service will 
eventually follow the lead of Natural Resources Canada and make their 
digital data available for free.

I can understand there being a cost involved in updating the "notices 
to mariners" (or whatever it is called), but the basic islands and 
water depths do not change -- any more than the data on topo maps 
change -- and that stuff should be available freely.

If you could get vector data, there are programs that will let you 
convert it into the formats used by Garmin, Magellan and Lowrance GPS 
units. (Not sure about the units used for in-car navigation, and not 
sure about other brands either. But there's lots of support of the 
Garmin GPS handheld units.)

-- 
  Darryl
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Received on Sun Jan 06 2008 - 15:02:35 PST

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