[aprssig] APRSdos using legal TIGER maps are better

[Robert Bruninga]

OK, I changed the program to use TIGER BMP maps.
The new program is:

http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/DO-TIGER.TMP
http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/DO-TIGER.BAS

The .TMP is an EXE file so chan the extension to run.

>>> bruninga at usna.edu 06/27/06 5:14 PM >>>
Today in an idle moment, I wondered about adding .BMP maps
to APRSdos.  After about an hour, I have it working at the
16 color level.

I wonder if this is worthwhile.  This lets anyone make maps
of their area easily just like the other programs do.  The maps
wont zoom other than blowing up the pixels, but it would
at least be something.

I wrote a quick drawing routine so that APRSdos usrs can see
what it would look like and can tell me if this is worth the trouble.
The tiger maps look much better than mapquest after the translation

The steps are as follows:
1 - download the TIGER map you want from http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapsurfer
2 - RIght clck and select COPY
3 - edit-paste into PAINT
4 - use the paint bucket to change all water to CYAN
5 - safe the file as a 16 color BMP (with an 8 byte file name)
6 - run my DO-TIGER.EXE to see what it couldl look like in APRSdos

download the program "DO-TIGER.TMP" and change the 
extension to a .EXE file and run it.  The source is available
as the .BAS file if anyone wants to figure out how to better translate
down to th 16 colors.  It would be nice to do it all in one step
and not have to use PAINT to change the colors and truncate
to 16 colors.

Anyway, just a thought.  This would still run on any old
PC or laptop down to a 386...

WARNING:  Do not waste any time making many maps, 
because if we do do this, I am sure there will be a final
way that is slightly better, and so I do not want to waste
your time with a false start...

de Wb4APR, Bob