maptools package rejects some polygon shapefiles?

Roger: 

Thanks for the quick response. Here is the file, 
and I will follow your suggestions.....
The ArcCatalog metadata section claims that this
is a Simple Polygon file, Topology FALSE,
feature count 558, spatial index = TRUE, 
Linear Referencing = TRUE, geographic coord system
Rick:

(I'm replying to the list too to ask for comments)

The file is recognised by ogrinfo as:

$ ogrinfo NorthAmericaBest.shp
INFO: Open of `NorthAmericaBest.shp'
using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.
1: NorthAmericaBest (3D Polygon)

It should not be too difficult to change read.shape to read 3D points as 
3D, and 3D lines and polygons as 2D. I guess that stripping the Z values 
is not a problem for anybody (excepting points I think)?

Thanks for your help - with a sample file to study, making this work will 
be much easier. Does anyone have 3D lines and 3D points files?

Best wishes,

Roger
Regards,
Rick R

Scientific Programmer / Quantitative Analyst
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
University of California, Santa Barbara
805 892 2534
reeves at nceas.ucsb.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Bivand [mailto:Roger.Bivand at nhh.no] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 12:08 PM
To: Rick Reeves
Cc: r-sig-geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: RE: [R-sig-Geo] maptools package rejects some polygon
shapefiles?

On Wed, 11 May 2005, Rick Reeves wrote:

News flash: the read.shapefile() method in the shapefiles package
reads
the file. 
It would be useful to see what getinfo.shape(filen) says, and to have a 
sight of the file. The error message suggests that it is neither type 3 
(PolyLine) nor type 5 (Polygon), so ArcGIS 9 must be using other codes 
(perhaps for PolyLineM, PolyLineeM, or their polygon equivalents). If
you 
could make the file available, it may be possible to try to handle files

like this (benefitting others, since you have a working solution).

Roger

btw, this is a shapefile based on the VMAP0 / DCW dataset.

RR

Scientific Programmer / Quantitative Analyst
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
University of California, Santa Barbara
805 892 2534
reeves at nceas.ucsb.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: r-sig-geo-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-sig-geo-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Rick Reeves
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 9:46 AM
To: r-sig-geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R-sig-Geo] maptools package rejects some polygon shapefiles?

Greetings: 

Using maptools in the Win XP environment, trying to
display an ESRI Shapefile (created with ArcMAP GIS ver 9)
outline map of North America. read.shape throws error:
Error in read.shape: Not a valid shape type. 

read.sahpe does read (and plot displays) a point shapefile 
created on the same platform. 

Any hints on determining the problem with 'not valid' shapefiles
in R? 

Thanks, 
Rick R

Scientific Programmer / Quantitative Analyst
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
University of California, Santa Barbara
805 892 2534
reeves at nceas.ucsb.edu

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Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no