41245 (!) World Cities & Towns for Download

[Dollard Desmarais]

I am having a problem using the gazetteer. I wonder if anyone could help me out. I have replaced earth-UNECE.ssc (which worked properly) with this gazetteer. In Celestia, if I select Sechelt, Sechelt appears top left corner of Celestia. If I press G (for GOTO), then Earth swings around so that Sechelt is presumably centered on my screen. However pressing G freezes my Home key, so that I can no longer zoom in (or zoom out with the End key).
On the other hand, instead of pressing on G, if I manually rotate Earth so that the province of B.C. is more or less centered on the screen, then I can zoom in to Sechelt (pressing Home key) and the label Sechelt appears. This is not a very effective way of doing things however, as Sechelt will be off the screen in no time.
Any ideas as to why pressing G makes Home and End inoperative? This did not happen with earth-UNECE.ssc program. All I did was replace this program with the gazetteer.

[don]

Any ideas as to why pressing G makes Home and End inoperative?

Very sorry. This is a late-discovered glitch that is currently being discussed in the SourceForge developer's list. It will be fixed for 1.3.1 final.

-Don G.

[t00fri]

Any ideas as to why pressing G makes Home and End inoperative?

Very sorry. This is a late-discovered glitch that is currently being discussed in the SourceForge developer's list. It will be fixed for 1.3.1 final.

-Don G.

Oh sorry, yes, over all this discussion in the developer forum about the best documentation format, I forgot to answer here.

I have discovered that bug already weeks ago. Chris now found out that it happens when the Size parameter in the locations file is not set. I will generate a new version of my earth-Gazetteer.ssc and world-capitals.ssc file a little later that has a nominal nonvanishing Size parameter.

Bye Fridger

[don]

Howdy Fridger,

New question:

When using the Enter key to enter the name of a city, is there any way to specify the country also?

For example, when I enter London or Moscow, I get taken to cities in Canada for both.

Thank you.

-Don G.

[t00fri]

Howdy Fridger,

New question:

When using the Enter key to enter the name of a city, is there any way to specify the country also?

For example, when I enter London or Moscow, I get taken to cities in Canada for both.

Thank you.

-Don G.

Don,

since my Gazetteer file specifies the 2-letter country code along with each city/town, adding it in all 42k+ locations is trivial via Perl. But the names get longer this way, hence more tendency for overlap etc. Also one has to look into the TAB completion scheme in this case.

One might only want to add the country code for the ambigous cases that also may be searched for with Perl.

In any case, technically there is no problem whatsoever, of course...

Bye Fridger

[don]

Howdy Fridger,

Thanks for your message.

What do you think would be the best solution for cities with the same name but different locations?

Cheers,

-Don G.

[maxim]

Isn't it common agreement to refer to the region where the cities are in?
Just a step up in the hierachy? Like 'Freiburg (Breisgau)' or 'Compton (Sussex)'

Just a guess,

maxim

[t00fri]

Isn't it common agreement to refer to the region where the cities are in?
Just a step up in the hierachy? Like 'Freiburg (Breisgau)' or 'Compton (Sussex)'

Just a guess,

maxim

I think I wrote it elsewhere already. Sure no problem whatsoever, in principle. The earth-Gazetteer data base contains a /large/ amount of additional info and via Perl I could trivially make it all available in the labels. But with 41250 entries, an imminent danger is "crowdedness" of labels. Clearly with every label including (region) besides its name, the chances for overlap would grow tremendously. Also when entering the names in the bottom command line, you then have to remember the full text of the respective label...

I would not want that myself, really. With so many labels a good, handy search mechanism is paramount...

Bye Fridger

[selden]

But, Fridger, isn't the extra information really needed only for those names which aren't unique?

[t00fri]

But, Fridger, isn't the extra information really needed only for those names which aren't unique?

Sure, but it is not terribly systematic this way. Upon Don's request I have already specially modified

Washington -> Washington D.C.

In my world-capitals.ssc file for such reasons. But now one has to enter precisely that string ...Yet in view of the neat TAB-completion it should not be a real problem.

As I said its no problem technically.

I have to write another Perl script though to search for multiply defined cities...

Bye Fridger

[maxim]

It's not very systematic that's true.
But it's an unsystematic systematicy (can anybody tell me about my flexion of english words!), used in many conventional maps, and thus common to almost everybody. So there shouldn't rise much problems.

maxim.

[don]

Just tried the latest CVS with your new file Fridger. Looks real nice!

A big thank you to whoever activated the Tab completion for location name entry! This definately gets us a step closer.

As for using country, it doesn't seem that would work because Canada appears to have two Londons. Thus, it seems the extra information needs to go another level lower, to state, territory, etc.

Question: Is there any way to include extra information in the .ssc file for use only by the Tab completion function, but not have it displayed in the on-screen text label?

-Don G.

[Guest]

The earth-Gazetteer.ssc file doesn't work on my Celestia. I have a Windows XP (I've still not test it in Linux), and last version 1.3.1. There only appears the first citties of the list until the first one which has special characters:

Code: Select all

Location "Sant Juli\u00e0 de L\u00f2ria" "Sol/Earth"

Anybody has a solution?
Thanks

[granthutchison]

There only appears the first citties of the list until the first one which has special characters:

Code: Select all

Location "Sant Juli\u00e0 de L\u00f2ria" "Sol/Earth"

Anybody has a solution?

There has as yet been no release of Celestia that can handle these extended characters - you need to compile direct from CVS.
Otherwise you'll need to wait for the next release.

Grant

[selden]

Anonymous guest,

Unfortunately, Fridger's newest Gazetteer locations file includes UTF-8 characters. v1.3.1 of Celestia does not understand UTF-8. You'll have to do one of the following:

1) download an older version of the Gazetteer
2) download and compile Celestia from the CVS archive
3) wait patiently for a v1.3.2 prerelease binary kit.

Sorry.

[madagh]

Hi, I'm the anonymous guest. I've just downloaded an older earth-Gazetteer.ssc, and it works perfectly. I'll wait for the next release of Celestia. I'm spanish, and I need Celestia can handle these extended characters in order to create my own .scc and .cel files. I'm too unexpert in linux to compile my own Celestia.
Thanks to all.

[Dora]

Hi Fridger,

thank you very much for this nice plugin.

Ciao
Dora

[t00fri]

Hi Fridger,

thank you very much for this nice plugin.

Ciao
Dora

You're welcome;-)

female?....noooooooooooooooooo

[granthutchison]

female?....noooooooooooooooooo

Calm down, Fridger. You know you got overexcited the last time ...

Grant

[t00fri]

female?....noooooooooooooooooo

Calm down, Fridger. You know you got overexcited the last time ...

Grant

Absolutely, Grant

a most dangerous matter, indeed!

male?....yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

Bye Fridger