Shapefile to Lat/Lon List

From Google Mapki

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This page is a placeholder waiting to be fleshed out. Right now, the following post is the best we can do.

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As Lokkju suggested, FWTools works great. Here are the instructions I received from the author of FWTools on how to convert a shape file to generic lat/long points (I then took these and drew them as polylines in GMaps).

Matt,

I have a suite of free GIS software called FWTools available at:

http://fwtools.maptools.org/

You could use them to translate the shapefiles to MapInfo mid/mif format which is a simple readable ASCII format. The command would be something like:

 ogr2ogr -f "MapInfo File" out.mif in.shp

Are the input shapefiles already in lat/long coordinates or are they in a projected coordinate system? If they are in a projected coordinate system, and you want to convert them to geographic (lat/long) coordinates then you can use a slightly more complex command:

 ogr2ogr -t_srs WGS84 -f "Mapinfo File" out.mif in.shp

If you need something different you will need to be a bit more specific.

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A format reference for Shapefiles is freely available on the ESRI website. If anyone has the time and inclination to write a conversion, go to app.http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=knowledgebase.whitepapers.viewPaper&PID=25&MetaID=398.