CIA World Map database in GRASS ?

[Ulrich Thoenes]

Hello from Heidelberg

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Ulli Thoenes. One of my 
(non professional) fields of interest is Geography,  GIS and Mapping.
On my computer I'm running the Grass 4.1.5 package for the operating
system 
linux. It works fine.  I meanwhile got the whole 30arcsec DEM 
datasets from the DCW from the USGS. (EROS datacenter). They can be 
displayed very easily resulting in fantastic pictures. 

Allready some 2 or 3 years ago I got the CIA world map database II in 
its original ascii format as well as in a compressed format (file 
extension .cbd).
Is there anybody who has been able to successfully import and use the
CIA WMP II data with GRASS. There exist three different formats of the
database: 1. ascii, 2. compressed, .cbd, 3. relational database.
WHich one can be used with GRASS ?

I would be very happy if somebody could tell me his experiences. What
I want to do is to overlay the 30ARCSEC DEM data with the CIA data.
This should result in some very nice maps.

Thank you very much, best regards, 
Ulli Thoenes

P.S.: I will post the content of this mail to the USENET as well.