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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I am trying to add a more "general" version of a
"roads" layer to my maps that I could use instead of the Tiger line data while
the maps being generated are not zoomed in. When the maps are
zoomed in closer I want to switch to the Tiger data and go from
there. I've downloaded a major roads layer from the national
map website called "roadtrl20". The problem is that it doesn't use
fields like "CFCC" like tiger does, it simply has a "NAME" field and a "Feature"
field. The Feature field has strings like "Limited Access Highway
Alternate Route", "Other Through HIghway", "Principle Highway", etc....
descriptions that are vague at best as they don't tell me if it is an interstate
or what.... and there are several descriptions that could be the same
thing.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In the "Name" field, it has things like
"Interstate Route 1", "State Route", "US Route", etc... which is a little
more useful except again there are several versions of things like
"Interstate" (Alternate Interstate, Business Interstate, etc) and to
make it more complicated many of them show several names separated by
comma's. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>So, it's difficult to come up with a good
expression to separate the different types of roads... I thought I could do it
in mapscript just reading the different "Names" into a variable and manipulating
that variable to give me one word like "Interstate", "State", "US" that I could
then use in my "expression" clause. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I thought I could do something similar to get the
route number alone to use for labeling purposes (I'd like to superimpose the
route # on a graphic of an interstate sign, etc). I
can't see any methods though that allow me to access the information from the
shapefile to do this.. Is this possible, or am I just making
this a lot more complicated that I need to?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Jeff</FONT></DIV>
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