Thanks! Two more quick questions....

[Norman Vine]

David L. Kriske writes:

>but exploding these shapefiles is a real drag!

You should be able to substitute gzopen() gzread() gzseek() 
gztell() appropriately for fopen() fread() etc.. in mapshape.c 
then you could keep the files in compressed form.

This is less of a performance hit then often thought
and in fact 'can' be faster if the data file is being read 
from a slow device. i.e. < CD , networked drive etc >

Norman Vine