[OZAPRS] Message Traffic and WX Alerts in Xastir

[Ray Wells]

I lodged a query on the xastir SIG and here are the important parts of 
the reply from Tom Russo and others.

> Not dbf, dbfawk.  That's an xastir-specific file that goes with a set
> of shapefiles to influence how those files are displayed. As best I
> can recall, the behavior you describe sounds like how xastir displays
> a shapefile with no corresponding dbfawk.

.. and from Tom ....
Yes, it is. Not only that, the weather alert stuff is entirely dependent on

proper dbfawk files being set up for the associated shapefiles -- the dbfawk 
files provided with Xastir will only make the NOAA US shapefiles work 
properly.  You'll have to set up a complete new dbfawk for the 
Australia-specific shapefiles.

You can look at the nwsc_ddmmyy.dbfawk file in /usr/local/share/xastir/config
for how the US county data is used; odds are good you can copy that one to 
another name and modify it only slightly to get your shapefiles working.  


One must set a "key" for each shape that will be used to match that
shape against the county in the alert (the alert "title").  For the US, that 
key is something like NM_C004 for county # 004 in state NM.  The 
nwsc_ddmmyy.dbfawk file combines the "STATE" and "FIPS" fields in the dbf file 
to construct the key.  It will almost certainly be different for the Australia 
shapefiles.  You will also need to be sure to set the dbfinfo and dbffields 
variables appropriately.


http://www.xastir.org/wiki/index.php/HowTo:DBFAWK


Where I'm at. The sample file nwsc_ddmmyy.dbfawk contains exactly the 
same field sequence as c_aus20on08.dbf so I renamed it to 
c_aus20on08.dbfawk I did the same thing with z_aus20on08 and 
mz_aus13on08. The last two had extra fields which I removed as per 
readme.maps. I still have no polygons and I suspect it's due to errors 
in my dbfawk files.

There are two tools, dbfinfo and dbffields, in xastir but these have not 
compiled. Tom makes mention of compiling them separately, in the wiki. 
I've not had time yet to investigate this. Those tools enable one to 
compare a dbf file with a dbfawk file; guess I'll find out tomorrow :-)

Despite no progress I feel I've made progress.

Ray vk2tv
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