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[R-pkg-devel] new maintainer sought for maps packages

8 messages · Ray Brownrigg, Alex Deckmyn, Martin Maechler +1 more

Original
Ray Brownrigg
# 
I am about to retire from my 'day job' and will therefore have little 
further association with acadaemia/research in general or R in 
particular.  I am currently maintainer for the 3 mapping packages maps, 
mapdata and mapproj.

Is there anyone out there who would be willing to take this on?

I have had an offer from someone who is prepared to act as a backup in 
the case that nobody else is interested, as a better option than letting 
those packages become orphaned.  However because he has a young family 
at home he has indicated that he would gladly defer to someone who had 
the time and inclination.

The 3 packages have recently been updated to incorporate changes 
necessitated by the R-devel version of check.

So please reply as soon as possible if you may be interested in this.  
Note that from next week, my official address will auto-respond to 
indicate I no longer work there, but I will still have access to that 
account and will be checking it during August (but not September or 
October).

Ray Brownrigg
School of Engineering and Computer Science
Victoria University of Wellington
Wellington, New Zealand
1 day later
Ray Brownrigg
# 
I have been somewhat surprised by the number of positive responses to my 
message.  I have found a candidate for the position of maintainer of the 
maps, mapdata and mapproj packages.  I have confidence that Alex Deckmyn 
<alex.deckmyn at meteo.be> will do at least as good a job as I have done in 
this regard.

The current (recent) releases of the packages still have my name as 
maintainer, but the address specified points to my (now) old work 
address which will autorespond to say I have now retired.  However in 
practise, I will still be able to read and respond to such emails for 
the foreseeable future.

Among other improvements, Alex is working on setting up a more accurate 
"world" database for maps and will submit this once it has been fully 
tested.

Thanks everyone for your support.
Ray Brownrigg
Alex Deckmyn
# 
First of all, I would like to thank Ray for his many years of taking care of maps, mapdata and mapproj, and for his confidence in my taking over. I hope to keep the packages running smoothly. 

I think R-sig-Geo is the best place to discuss future developments and will be posting there soon. As Ray mentioned, I (with his help & feedback) have been preparing an updated world map. I am going to be very cautious, but the many changes in country names (post-1990 Europe!) mean that any package or code that uses maps by calling map('world',region=...) to create a map using country names, could be affected. Maintainers of packages calling "maps" may want to contact me to make sure I don't break anything. In any case, I am currently testing a beta version that includes the old data set as a fall back. 

Alex 

--- 
Dr. Alex Deckmyn e-mail: alex.deckmyn at meteo.be 
Royal Meteorological Institute http://www.meteo.be 
Ringlaan 3, 1180 Ukkel, Belgium tel. (32)(2)3730646 



I have been somewhat surprised by the number of positive responses to my 
message. I have found a candidate for the position of maintainer of the 
maps, mapdata and mapproj packages. I have confidence that Alex Deckmyn 
<alex.deckmyn at meteo.be> will do at least as good a job as I have done in 
this regard. 

The current (recent) releases of the packages still have my name as 
maintainer, but the address specified points to my (now) old work 
address which will autorespond to say I have now retired. However in 
practise, I will still be able to read and respond to such emails for 
the foreseeable future. 

Among other improvements, Alex is working on setting up a more accurate 
"world" database for maps and will submit this once it has been fully 
tested. 

Thanks everyone for your support. 
Ray Brownrigg
Martin Maechler
# 
> First of all, I would like to thank Ray for his many years of taking care of maps, mapdata and mapproj, and for his confidence in my taking over. I hope to keep the packages running smoothly. 

Indeed, thanks to Ray and you (and I am also happy to have heard
from Ray about many positive responses !)

    > I think R-sig-Geo is the best place to discuss future developments and will be posting there soon.

I agree ... but the following is not about 'maps' in particular,
but package maintenance / compatibility ....

    >  As Ray mentioned, I (with his help & feedback) have been preparing an updated world map. I am going to be very cautious, but the many changes in country names (post-1990 Europe!) mean that any package or code that uses maps by calling map('world',region=...) to create a map using country names, could be affected. Maintainers of packages calling "maps" may want to contact me to make sure I don't break anything. In any case, I am currently testing a beta version that includes the old data set as a fall back. 

I know these data sets are not very small, but I would still
strongly recommend that you 
keep the old map, say as   "world198x"  (and change the "x" to a
digit if you know which one, or the "8x" to "7y" ... etc).
Storage and bandwidth have become considerably cheaper and so
the package could provide (almost) back compatibility ... and
also something interesting in itself (comparison of two very
similar maps with R; teaching, history, ...).

Best regards,
Martin

    > Alex 

    > --- 
    > Dr. Alex Deckmyn e-mail: alex.deckmyn at meteo.be 
    > Royal Meteorological Institute http://www.meteo.be 
    > Ringlaan 3, 1180 Ukkel, Belgium tel. (32)(2)3730646 



    > I have been somewhat surprised by the number of positive responses to my 
    > message. I have found a candidate for the position of maintainer of the 
    > maps, mapdata and mapproj packages. I have confidence that Alex Deckmyn 
    > <alex.deckmyn at meteo.be> will do at least as good a job as I have done in 
    > this regard. 




    > The current (recent) releases of the packages still have my name as 
    > maintainer, but the address specified points to my (now) old work 
    > address which will autorespond to say I have now retired. However in 
    > practise, I will still be able to read and respond to such emails for 
    > the foreseeable future. 

    > Among other improvements, Alex is working on setting up a more accurate 
    > "world" database for maps and will submit this once it has been fully 
    > tested. 

    > Thanks everyone for your support. 
    > Ray Brownrigg 

    > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

    > ______________________________________________
    > R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list
    > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
Jonathan Callahan
# 
Alex,

Thank you for addressing the #1 issue with the 'maps' package. I have
several clients and colleagues that I have pushed to use R for mapping but
it's always embarrassing to say they have to either 1: accept Soviet Union
era borders or 2: embrace the complexity of the 'sp' package.

Updating the world borders and (Oh please!) allowing countries to be
identified by ISO-3166-1-alpha2 country codes would hugely improve the
utility of the 'maps' package.

Our efforts with the MazamaSpatialUtils
<https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/MazamaSpatialUtils> package
originated with the outdated world map in the 'maps' package.

Best Regards,

Jon

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Alex Deckmyn <alex.deckmyn at meteo.be>
wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Alex Deckmyn
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Martin, 

The old data set will certainly stay for a while (or indeed indefinitely, why not). To make the transition as smooth as possible (I am aware that "maps" is used in more places than I can ever check myself) I am including the possibility of switching back to "legacy" mode using an environment variable (or an extra function "world.legacy(TRUE)"), so that any code that runs into trouble can be switched to the old database without needing to edit the code itself. 

Would it be a good idea to make the new maps package (beta) available (e.g. via github) prior to submitting to CRAN? It is more or less ready. Given the many packages that call maps, this could give maintainers a chance to check things. For the moment, it's only the country borders & names that have changed. 

Alex 

From: "Martin Maechler" <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>

            

      
      
      
    

        
I agree ... but the following is not about 'maps' in particular, 
but package maintenance / compatibility ....

            

      
      
      
    

        
I know these data sets are not very small, but I would still 
strongly recommend that you 
keep the old map, say as "world198x" (and change the "x" to a 
digit if you know which one, or the "8x" to "7y" ... etc). 
Storage and bandwidth have become considerably cheaper and so 
the package could provide (almost) back compatibility ... and 
also something interesting in itself (comparison of two very 
similar maps with R; teaching, history, ...). 

Best regards, 
Martin

            

      
      
      
    

        

        

      
      
    

        

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Jonathan Callahan
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Please do make the new code available for testing. Those of us developing
packages that import 'maps' would love the chance to test our code against
the new version of the package.

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Alex Deckmyn <alex.deckmyn at meteo.be>
wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Alex Deckmyn
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Jon, 

Identification using ISO codes is a good idea, although I think the old naming scheme shouldn't be broken. But adding functionalities to "map" will always have to be done in a way that keeps backward compatbility, so I'll have to think about a good way to do this. 

Alex 

--- 
Dr. Alex Deckmyn e-mail: alex.deckmyn at meteo.be 
Royal Meteorological Institute http://www.meteo.be 
Ringlaan 3, 1180 Ukkel, Belgium tel. (32)(2)3730646 


From: "Jonathan Callahan" <jonathan at mazamascience.com> 
To: "Alex" <alex.deckmyn at meteo.be> 
Cc: r-package-devel at r-project.org 
Sent: Friday, 31 July, 2015 20:31:30 
Subject: Re: [R-pkg-devel] new maintainer sought for maps packages 

Alex, 
Thank you for addressing the #1 issue with the 'maps' package. I have several clients and colleagues that I have pushed to use R for mapping but it's always embarrassing to say they have to either 1: accept Soviet Union era borders or 2: embrace the complexity of the 'sp' package. 

Updating the world borders and (Oh please!) allowing countries to be identified by ISO-3166-1-alpha2 country codes would hugely improve the utility of the 'maps' package. 

Our efforts with the MazamaSpatialUtils package originated with the outdated world map in the 'maps' package. 

Best Regards, 

Jon

        
On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Alex Deckmyn < alex.deckmyn at meteo.be > wrote:

        
First of all, I would like to thank Ray for his many years of taking care of maps, mapdata and mapproj, and for his confidence in my taking over. I hope to keep the packages running smoothly. 

I think R-sig-Geo is the best place to discuss future developments and will be posting there soon. As Ray mentioned, I (with his help & feedback) have been preparing an updated world map. I am going to be very cautious, but the many changes in country names (post-1990 Europe!) mean that any package or code that uses maps by calling map('world',region=...) to create a map using country names, could be affected. Maintainers of packages calling "maps" may want to contact me to make sure I don't break anything. In any case, I am currently testing a beta version that includes the old data set as a fall back. 

Alex 

--- 
Dr. Alex Deckmyn e-mail: alex.deckmyn at meteo.be 
Royal Meteorological Institute http://www.meteo.be 
Ringlaan 3, 1180 Ukkel, Belgium tel. (32)(2)3730646 



I have been somewhat surprised by the number of positive responses to my 
message. I have found a candidate for the position of maintainer of the 
maps, mapdata and mapproj packages. I have confidence that Alex Deckmyn 
< alex.deckmyn at meteo.be > will do at least as good a job as I have done in 
this regard. 

The current (recent) releases of the packages still have my name as 
maintainer, but the address specified points to my (now) old work 
address which will autorespond to say I have now retired. However in 
practise, I will still be able to read and respond to such emails for 
the foreseeable future. 

Among other improvements, Alex is working on setting up a more accurate 
"world" database for maps and will submit this once it has been fully 
tested. 

Thanks everyone for your support. 
Ray Brownrigg 


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