[Gvsig_english] opening a MapInfo file

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 19-Feb-08, at 11:01 AM, roger.taylor at l-3com.com wrote:
> As someone new to GIS I don’t know if I can convert a set of  
> MapInfo (ESRI) files so that the map can be opened in gvSIG. The  
> group of files that together describe a map in MapInfo end  
> in .ID, .IND, .MAP and .TAB. Does anyone know if it is possible to  
> open this in gvSIG, and how it’s done?
>

I do not believe that gvSIG supports MapInfo files.  But some other  
applications do.  I believe QGIS should be able to open them, you may  
need to experiment to find out which of the four files it can handle  
though.

Also, note, that MapInfo is actually a different company and product  
from ESRI - so I'm not sure what you mean by "MapInfo (ESRI)" -  
perhaps you are confused with "ESRI ArcInfo".

You can convert between these file formats using a command line tool  
called ogr2ogr, which comes bundled with a set of programs called  
FWTools.  It takes a bit of learning but once you get the hand of it,  
you are in a powerful position :)

See http://fwtools.maptools.org/

I write about this set of tools, with many examples, in my book.   
There may be a sample chapter online that touches on it, I'm not sure:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping

Tyler