Can I create an European map using the map function in R

Hi,

I am trying to create a spatial weight matrix based on the neighboring
relationship among Europan countries.  Can I use the map function in R to
generate a European map and then use this map to build the w weight matrix?
 So far, I cannot create a map for Finland using the map function.

It is not clear to me what you mean by "... use this map to build the w weight matrix".  
How can you use an image on the screen to generate a matrix?

However, to get the map of Europe using the maps package, try something like this:

library(maps)
m <- map("world", xlim=c(-10, 30), ylim=c(35, 60))
Europe <- sort(m$names)
fix(Europe)	# remove anything you don't need
map("world", Europe, exact=T)

Note for example, you will need to leave in "UK:Great Britain" and "UK:Northern Ireland", 
since there is no country called "UK".  Similarly, Malta is named as "Malta:Malta".

Hope this helps,
Ray Brownrigg

Also, I am not very sure about the steps in importing external map data and
use that information to generate a spatial weight matrix in R.  Could
anyone show me how to implement this using European countries as an
example?

Pass.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Maomao