OT: Map generation/plotting

[Pat Knight]

In a previous job I produced a Python script to draw maps using the
CIA world map database. Unfortunately, my previous employer has the
rights to the script so I can't just post it.

However, it didn't take long to write. You can get the data files from
various places on the net (I think we got them from
gatekeeper.dec.com). They're in a well documented format storing
national boundaries, oceans, rivers, lakes etc as sequences of
points. The points use a latitude/longitude encoding. There are open
source C programs that handle the format - these together with the
data documentation should let you write a Python script quite
quickly. I used PIL to generate PNG and JPG versions.

I never did automatic colouring of the maps - an exercise for the
developer? :-)