 RINFO - 0.01    >>>>> ALPHA SOFTWARE!!! <<<<<

 This package enbales R to import data from Arc/Info  V7.x binary
coverages. It uses the wonderful functions written by 
Daniel Morissette <damno@videotron.ca> to import/export data
from binary coverages from/to E00 ascii files.
Please, notice that all the code under the RInfo/avce00 is
copyright of Daniel Morissette, who is the writter.
I didn't write any code inside this directory.

 Basically, there is a function to import each type of file (ARC, LAB, etc.).
Please, notice that RInfo is a work in progress.

 Nowadays, the list of functions RInfo provides is:

-get.namesofcoverages(dir)

  Provided the name of the directory where the coverage (dir) is,  it returns
the names of all the coverages... Well, it really returns all the file and directory
names in the directory 'dir'.

- get.tablenames(dir)
  
  Returns all the table names plus some aditional data, like the number of 
records. More information about this can be found in the help. 

- get.tablefields(infodir, tablename)

 Returns the name of the fields of the given table.

- get.XXXdata(directory, coverage, filename)

  Returns the data of the given filename into a R list. XXX can be:

   arc, bnd, pal, lab, cnt, tol

- get.tabledata(infodir, coverage, tablename)


There also also another two functions to plot arcs:

-plotarc(arc, new=T)

 This plot all the arcs returned by get.arcdata. If we want
to rebuild the limits in the axis we should set new=T. In other case 
we should set new=F. This is useful when you want to draw some coverages.

plotpal(arc,pal, new=T)

 Now we only plot the arcs defined by pal (returned from a call to 
get.pladata).

*EXAMPLE

Let us suppose we have all the data (in format Arc/Info V7.x) under the directory
/usr/gis/data. We'll have a directory called "info", where some files with information
about all the coverages is stored. We have two coverages called "Lakes" and "Rivers"
under the directories "lakes" and "rivers".

/usr/gis/data-/
              |
	      |
	    |-----|------|
	   info  lakes rivers

To import the arcs from the lakes coverage we can write and store them in a variable
called arclakes, we can write:

arclakes<-get.arcdata("/usr/gis/data/","lakes","arc.adf")

Notice the final slash in the first argument and the name of the file where the data
are stored. This is the more common name, but it may change.

To import the polygons  we write:

pallakes<-get.arcdata("/usr/gis/data/","lakes","pal.adf")

To plot all the lakes:

plotpal(arclakes, pallakes)

To plot only the first and second lake:

plotpal(arclakes, pallakes[[1]])

* TODO

- Improve the documentation quality.
- Improve the plot funtions
- Write functions to perform searches in tables.
- Add the URL

Please, I would like to hear suggestions from the users in order to improve this package.

 Virgilio Gmez-Rubio
