Hi, Bertrand!
It all sounds very strange! I can't imagine what's happening with the new
GEONAMES.DAT.
Here are the things that don't add up:
> "yes, I 've an ECU.TDF of 73 kb, and an ECU.IDF of 74 kb, both in my
Guide directory"
If you have the GUIDE8/CITIES directory and ECU.TDF then Guide should
display the whole CITIES database (that's two MILLION places, versus de
60,000 that my GEONAMES.DAT file supplies, or the 4,000 that come in the
original GEONAMES.DAT). But you won't confuse the CITIES names with the
normal names because 1) they appear in a different color, and 2) they only
appear at higher magnifications (the database kicks in only when the field
of view is sufficiently small).
Incidentally, I'm working on merging the CITIES database with the
GEONAMES.DAT (removing duplicates and aliases, and including all CITIES
places that don't appear in GEONAMES.DAT at "level of importance" 9 -- the
lowest).
>"I did that. When I ckicked on " : ", to go in geo mode, I saw on the
screen the continents
>outlines, but as soon as I zoomed in one level, all desapeared, and the
screen went blank
>as far as I zoomed."
Then you're definitely reading the GEO directory. The initial geo view of
"level 1, 180 degree" (360 degrees, actually) is built-in, it doesn't use
the GEO.DAT file that the higher level magnification views do.
> "I did that. All things stayed as usual, that is to say with outlines and
cities as they were
>displayed before the replacement of your new GEONAMES.DAT, without anymore
city names than before"
So, if Guide is using the GEO directory, and you ONLY have GEO.DAT and the
new GEONAMES.DAT files in it... How is it possible that you're seeing the
old GEONAMES.DAT place names?? I'm baffled :-o
Maybe you ARE seeing the new place names, but in your case can't easily tell
the difference. Switching from a 4,000 place database to a 60,000 place
database isn't all that noticeable at first glance.
Try this:
* Make sure that the GUIDE8/GEO/GEONAMES.DAT file is 1928 kb long (mine),
and not 135kb (Guide's).
* Press "+" and "-" in geo mode and see if cities appear in proper level of
importance or not.
An easy test is to find Barcelona, Spain (in northeastern Spain, close to
France). In Guide's original GEONAMES.DAT Barcelona appears (twice) at
levels of importance 7 and 8, so the second largest city in Spain appears
only after all the lesser towns. In my GEONAMES.DAT Madrid appears first,
then Barcelona, then three more cities.
In France, both databases have Paris appear first, then Marseille, but
pressing "+" one more time has about 25 more cities appear at a time with
Guide's database, but only three new cities (Lyon, Toulouse, and Nantes)
appear when using my GEONAMES.DAT.
Which behavior are you seeing?
I would like to know what's going on (or what the right way to do all this
is... Bill?) so that I can add a usage hint in my Guide page :-)