[R] Maps, Eastern Europe

[Ray Brownrigg]

> From: "Rau, Roland" <Rau at demogr.mpg.de>
> 
> I would like to employ a European map in a presentation. My idea was to
> use:
> library(mapdata)
> map("worldHires", c("Austria", "Switzerland", "Germany"))
> 
> where I include all countries from my analysis as a vector of character
> strings like in the example above. Unfortunately, I was unable to
> specify the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) or the Czech
> Republic. 
> Initially, I thought I misspelled the country names. To avoid this
> obvious error, I checked within 'mapdata_2.0-14.tar.gz' the file
> 'worldHires.names'. To my surprise, the spelling was not the source of
> the error - it was rather the case that those countries were not
> included.
> 
> Did some people experience similar problems? And if yes: how did you
> proceed?
> 
Unfortunately the world databases for the maps package are very old
(early 1990's) and have not been updated since, except for minor
typographical errors in country names.  Note that Czechoslovakia is
there (as is USSR!).  Also, it currently satisfies my needs, which is
why I don't have the resources to update it.

I suggest you start with the maptools package, but as I understand it,
you need to also find some appropriate shapefile data. [Other
respondents may improve upon this suggestion.]

Regards,
Ray Brownrigg
maps package maintainer