[GRASS-user] Trouble with ESRI TIGER/LINE Files and Coordinate System

[Hamish]

Ryan Rosario wrote:
> I have downloaded several files from the ESRI TIGER/LINE database. The
> site claims that the files are in lat/lon NAD83 format. Perfect!
> I assume this would correspond to EPSG 4269 format.
....
> I import the shape file using v.in.ogr and then display the vector map,
> it is displayed in a region using some other format (huge numbers), and
> not in the lat/lon format I expected. The projection even reads "x,y"
> even though I selected lat/lon for the location:
....
>  |       Projection: x,y                                 
>                   
>  |       N:  -322776.48526848    S:  -457156.35430172                 
>  |       E:    51189.38422193    W:   -59948.35401544                 
....
> What is strange is that if I import this shape file into gvSIG, it reads
> the map perfectly fine, with the correct coordinate system.
> Since the file is in plain ol' lat/lon, it should display that way in
> GRASS.
> What am I missing??
> What could I be doing wrong?


can you check with ogrinfo what's *really* in the shapefile?

   ogrinfo -ro -al mapname.shp

That will dump a huge amount of stuff to the terminal (^C to kill it)
but you should see LINESTRING with a comma separated list of coordinates.

Are those raw coordinates in lat/lon or ...?

what does the shapefile.prj look like?


I am not too familiar with gvSIG's capabilities; will QGIS load it and
show correct projection info and mouse-over coords on the bottom status
line?


Hamish