Does it already exist a library in R to draw maps (something like a Generic Mapping Toolbox, http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/ port). I've seen in an old R-help that Ross Ihaka once tried to port the S-plus map library (http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/help/99b/0832.html ). Anybody know if this package is available somewhere or if there is somebody developing a Mapping package for R. I'll might then try to help.
There are two, but AFAIK neither of them will work on Windows. My port of the basic S maps package (no projections) has recently been modified to provide a small (700KB) 'base' package with limited maps data (just usa, state, counties, nz and world.thin), plus an add-on package called mapdata (24MB) with the high-resolution maps. [This split has not yet been fully tested, and requires maps to be *installed* before mapdata, and mapdata must be installed in the same library directory as maps.] These are available from ftp://ftp.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/pub/statistics/map/map*_1.1-0* The other solution in development is called Rmap from Barry Rowlingson (http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/Software/Rmap/), but as I understand it, this requires quite a lot of "third-party" stuff to be installed first. Ray Brownrigg