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Technical Question

Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 7:01 pm
by Paul McKeown
Can anyone point me to a set of co-ordinates for national boundaries, please.

I don't need a highly detailed set for high resolution mapping, I don't need the hassle of delving into shapefiles or the like, just something low resolution say suitable for displaying a map of the world at 1024 x 768. I don't need administrative boundaries within national borders, or any other detail at all. Just a list of co-ordinates, hopefully less than 100 kB in length, representing all the countries of the world, up to date, all the UN countries including South Sudan, all the standard non UN countries such as Taiwan, Western Sahara, West Bank and Gaza, etc., all the recognised self-governing dependencies, such as Falkland Islands, French Guiana, etc. And a key, so I know which set of co-ords correspond to which region.

I have been breaking my head for days on this one, can't believe that it should be impossible short of a doctorate in geographical information systems.

Help! Please! :D

Re: Technical Question

Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 10:30 pm
by John McKenna
Probably not the answer you require, Paul, but the Royal Geographical Soc. could probably point you in the right direction but may require membership.
The US magazine National Geographic may also be a place to visit they have a map-based World Heritage Project in conjunction with UNESCO that also has a set of tool for interactive map making. Good luck.

Re: Technical Question

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 8:00 pm
by HLang
Does this do what you're looking for:

http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/data/WDB/

(Filesize is a lot larger than you wanted, but then there's a lot of detail...)

Edit: More options here: http://www.earthmodels.org/data-and-tools/coastlines

Re: Technical Question

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 8:33 pm
by Christopher Kreuzer
HLang wrote:Does this do what you're looking for:

http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/data/WDB/

(Filesize is a lot larger than you wanted, but then there's a lot of detail...)
And on that site, this page has images that could be of use:

http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/data/Earth/

Scroll down to see the 'borders' and 'coastlines' images.

Re: Technical Question

Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 10:04 pm
by Simon Ansell
Google Fusion Tables almost certainly has the data you're looking for - a quick search for "country borders" returns a few results that can be downloaded in KML, though I can't vouch for source/accuracy of the data.

I would have thought it was possible to do this via Google Earth, but I just spent 5 minutes messing around and couldn't figure out how to do it - if there is a Google Earth API and you have any programming knowledge it would probably be fairly simple, I would guess.

Re: Technical Question

Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 12:42 am
by John McKenna
Also worth a visit -
http://www.thematicmapping.org
on the menu: World Borders Dataset and there are mapping tools.
The site is run by a dedicated Norwegian (not Slartibartfast).

Re: Technical Question

Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:39 am
by Paul McKeown
Thanks for the suggestions, folks. Will reply in detail later.