WiGLE.net

How can I create maps? No maps for Norway around... do the maps use any standard format? The .mappack files are ok to "decode" but how are those .png files made? Can I find .png files like these for any country? What's up with the three different .png files for i.e. Chichago, what's the need for 3, and what's the difference between them?

Where is this Rigle where I can submit request for maps to be made?

Hm...

have a look over
http://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=237

if you still have questions, let us know!

RiGLE is one of the bit of code that runs the webmaps

As a good forum user I've of course already read the readme file(s), searched the forum and visited the download page.

our clients (JiGLE,DiGLE,etc.) all work world-wide, as long as you have a mappack for it, however. so if you put one together by hand (see the downloads page) it should "just work"

Just add coordinates, .png images. See the existing .mappack
files in <install dir>\JiGLEMaps\maps\* for hints using any
text editor.

So, since my knowledge of the map files is not high, my question was HOW to "put one together by hand".

I did understand the .mappack files, but I have no clue where the .png files comes from. Again, are these standard map files? Does this have anything to do with GIS?

If I buy my own mappack for i.e. Norway, and they come in a "standard" format, will I be able to convert them to .png files compatible with Wigle?

Your famous download page does NOT contain so much valuable information on how to create maps...

Someone of you must know the answers here? If help was made more available, more people could create their own maps and then upload them to wigle.net (as long as they used legal sources for their maps of course).

alright. that's a fair cop.

first off, to be clear: *iGLE mappacks are a twisted invention of the WiGLE crew, and not something you can buy (yet! :-)

the series of images in a mappack are used by the client for zooming via interpolation. if you don't want to zoom, you only need the image.0 entry. all of the images must map to exactly the same corner coordinates,
and each successive image.n+1 must be twice the width and twice the height of image.n

so we will go over the JiGLE 0.6.11 default mappack and go over each point, which should give you enough to do your own (its way easier to start from no-zooming :-)
the shortName and longName should be self explanatory.

image.0 is the top-level image, seen when the mappack is first opened. the path is relative to the base of the JiGLE install. in the case of chicago-0.png, its a 600x740 png. the northwest corner of that image corresponds to (41.9798, -87.742) and the southeast corner corresponds to (41.841, -87.598).

remember (for crazy historical reasons, which we swear we'll fix one of these days) upperLeftX is northwest corner latitude, upperLeftY is northwest corner longitude, lowerRightX is southeast corner latitude, and lowerRightY is southeast corner longitude.

North and East lat and lon values are in decimal degrees, and positive. South and West lat and lon values are in decimal degrees, and negative.

image.1 is the first-zoom-level image, seen when the mappack is first zoomed. the path is relative to the base of the JiGLE install. in the case of chicago-1.png, its a 1200x1480 png (twice the width and twice the height of chicago-0.png). the northwest corner of that image corresponds to (41.9798, -87.742) and the southeast corner corresponds to (41.841, -87.598).


and finally image.2 is the second-zoom-level image, seen when the mappack is zoomed further. the path is relative to the base of the JiGLE install. in the case of chicago-2.png, its a 2400x2960 png (twice the width and twice the height of chicago-1.png). the northwest corner of that image corresponds to (41.9798, -87.742) and the southeast corner corresponds to (41.841, -87.598).

so, to create your own JiGLE .mappack: get an image (from wherever) that you know the northwest and southeast coordinates of and put it in a file in JiGLEmaps/maps/your.mappack like:
and you should see it in the dropdown the next time you start up JiGLE. if you have any more questions, please let us know!

as to where the images come from, we drew them! or more to the point, bobzilla wrote software to draw them from public domain data available from the US Census. we're always looking for more such data from other places in the world, but we can't redistribute things with other people's copyrights on them (for the most part.) where you get your images is up to you, but we won't be able to distribute them from the wigle site, most likely (again, due to the arcane and twisty copyright laws.)