[OSGeo-Discuss] Call for help: GDAL and txt2shp.py

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 4-Jul-08, at 2:40 AM, Kjell Are Refsvik wrote:

>> - they will be your best friends soon.
>
> I am not completely sure how these two specific programs from the  
> gdal package relates to the challenge of outputting a png from 2  
> shapefiles (map and legend).

ogrinfo can be used to give a report on the type of coordinates being  
used in your shapefile.  You can 'cd' into the directory of your  
shapefiles and then type:
ogrinfo yourshapefilename.shp -so -al

This should give you a short report.  When asking for help you can  
include this report and others will see more information about your  
dataset without having to download it.

gdalinfo operates a similar way but for images and rasters.  This may  
not apply to you at the moment.

You can read more about these tools and more in chapter 3 of my book:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596008659/

Fortunately some of these examples are included in the free online  
chapter at http://oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping/chapter/ch03.pdf !  
(around book page 30)

Hope this helps.  Enjoy,
Tyler