Label with substring of metadata

[Dylan Beaudette]

On Wednesday 24 January 2007 20:57, David Isaacson wrote:
> Hi,
> I want to label my map with a substring of the metadata.  I've got a
> freeway map, and all of the freeways are labeled as "Interstate 5" and
> "US Highway 6".  I just want the number.
>
> Is this possible?
>
> I thought I might try to add that data to the .dbf file, using Excel.
> And it works using shp2img, but when I use ka-map to create an
> interactive map no roads are drawn at all (and no error messages are
> given either).  So what the hell is going on?
>
> What's the right way to add metadata to a shapefile (assume I can't
> afford to buy ArcGIS)?  And is there an easier way to do this whole
> labeling thing?  Thanks.
>
> David

Hi David - nice to see another UCD person using mapserver.

I would recommend looking into QGIS , uDIg, PostGIS, or GRASS as a means 
to 'edit' a shapefile. It could be that excel saved a slightly incompatible 
DBF version -- I have had this happen numerous times. Check column names and 
their data type. If  you have the patience to try PostGIS -- it is possible 
to do nearly anything with the spatial and attribute data imported from a 
shapefile -- and you can pull the data directly into mapserver! We use this 
setup here for all of our mapserver applications.

Cheers,

Dylan

-- 
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341