Chapter 7. Converting Map Data

Chapter 2 outlined the various tasks of digital mapping; one of those tasks involved converting data between different formats. In a perfect world there might only be one or two formats, but in reality there are dozens of different ways to store spatial information. Add to that both raster and vector data formats, and you've got quite an array of options. Like Chapter 6, this chapter by itself won't likely create beautiful maps, but the steps presented here are even more important because they are a key part of the path to producing useful maps.

The examples in this chapter use the GDAL/OGR utilities that are introduced in Chapter 6. They are part of the FWTools package.