[GRASS-user] Possible to color lines in d.vect according to RGB column?

[Hamish]

Tim wrote:
> Can someone please let me know if it is possible to assign
> custom colors to the lines around individual shapes in a vector
> file? 

it is possible, and in the past I've done it.

> I realize this is awkward because two adjacent shapes share a
> border, and yet may have a different RGB value in the attribute
> table.  I suppose this could be solved by having the border be
> half the color of one and half the color of the other - but
> this may not be possible.  My idea would be to have something
> like
> 
> d.vect -a  type=area map=provinces rgb_column=RGB
> 
> Except instead of the rgb column specifying fill color, it
> specifies line color.  

my solution was to have a small (say 3mm) fill of color along
the inside of each area boundary. I didn't have a nice automated
solution, just added category numbers to the boundaries, ran
v.buffer, used v.overlay to save only the side of the buffer
which was inside each area, and then d.vect'ed the result
with fcolor=R:G:B and color=none. a bit clunkly, but ISTR that
it worked.


Hamish