
from : http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhs/gshhs.html

GSHHS - Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline

A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database

Data and Software: ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhs

12/20/2007 06:46AM          9,190 README.gshhs
04/02/2007 12:00AM     80,787,138 gshhs_1.5.zip
12/20/2007 06:45AM    111,033,828 gshhs_1.6.zip		DOWNLOADED
04/02/2007 12:00AM         14,135 gshhs_1.8_src.zip
12/20/2007 06:45AM         14,863 gshhs_1.9_src.zip	DOWNLOADED

This 1.9 'src', nearly worked with the 1.6 data ;=))


====================================================================

Other Sources:

Note there are several GMT tar archives available:

 1. GMT_src.tar.gz		: Source code and Unix man pages only, no documentation
 2. GMT_share.tar.gz		: Shared run-time support files
 3. GSHHS_coast.tar.gz		: Standard resolution GSHHS coastline data
 4. GMT_pdf.tar.gz		: PDF version of cookbook, tutorial, and man pages
 5. GMT_web.tar.gz		: Web (HTML) version of docs and man pages
 6. GMT_tut.tar.gz		: Tutorial data sets
 7. GMT_scripts.tar.gz		: Example directory with scripts and test data
 8. GSHHS_full.tar.gz		: Full resolution GSHHS coastline data
 9. GSHHS_high.tar.gz		: High resolution GSHHS coastline data
10. GMT_suppl.tar.gz		: GMT Supplemental programs that link with GMT

from : ftp://ftp.geologi.uio.no/pub/gmt

03/16/2000 12:00AM         27,397 bzip2.zip
06/07/1999 12:00AM        495,846 gawk303x.zip
10/11/2007 03:58AM         11,599 install_gmt.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      4,580,551 netcdf.tar.bz2
10/16/2007 05:52AM        174,965 netcdf.zip

from : ftp://ftp.geologi.uio.no/pub/gmt/4/

FTP directory /pub/gmt/4/ at ftp.geologi.uio.no
To view this FTP site in Windows Explorer, click Page, and then click Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to Dept. of geosciences, the University of Oslo. The IP address you come from
 and your email adress is logged; if you dislike this policy please disconnect now.
 
 GMT (the Generic Map Tools) is at pub/gmt; everything else should also be where you 
 expect it to be. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10/11/2007 03:58AM     10,384,876 GMT4.2.1_pdf.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM     10,436,978 GMT4.2.1_pdf.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      2,930,225 GMT4.2.1_scripts.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM      3,555,694 GMT4.2.1_scripts.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM         46,162 GMT4.2.1_share.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM         47,582 GMT4.2.1_share.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      1,093,326 GMT4.2.1_src.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM      1,348,633 GMT4.2.1_src.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM        750,073 GMT4.2.1_suppl.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM        883,027 GMT4.2.1_suppl.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM        989,210 GMT4.2.1_tut.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM      1,283,213 GMT4.2.1_tut.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      2,981,167 GMT4.2.1_web.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM      3,126,935 GMT4.2.1_web.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      2,342,509 GMT_exe.zip                DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 11:52PM             20 GMT_pdf.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             19 GMT_pdf.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM     10,435,844 GMT_pdf.zip
10/11/2007 11:52PM             24 GMT_scripts.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             23 GMT_scripts.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      3,615,916 GMT_scripts.zip
10/11/2007 11:52PM             22 GMT_share.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             21 GMT_share.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM        103,374 GMT_share.zip              DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 11:52PM             20 GMT_src.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             19 GMT_src.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      1,614,650 GMT_src.zip                DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 11:52PM             22 GMT_suppl.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             21 GMT_suppl.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      1,069,116 GMT_suppl.zip              DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 03:58AM      2,442,124 GMT_suppl_exe.zip
10/11/2007 11:52PM             20 GMT_tut.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             19 GMT_tut.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      1,284,455 GMT_tut.zip
10/11/2007 11:52PM             20 GMT_web.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             19 GMT_web.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      3,857,852 GMT_web.zip               DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 03:58AM      4,249,079 GSHHS1.9_coast.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM      4,592,152 GSHHS1.9_coast.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM     29,338,515 GSHHS1.9_full.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM     48,301,351 GSHHS1.9_full.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      8,970,004 GSHHS1.9_high.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 03:58AM     11,263,285 GSHHS1.9_high.tar.gz
10/11/2007 11:52PM             22 GSHHS_coast.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             21 GSHHS_coast.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      4,584,378 GSHHS_coast.zip           DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 11:52PM             21 GSHHS_full.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             20 GSHHS_full.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:59AM     48,295,655 GSHHS_full.zip            DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 11:52PM             21 GSHHS_high.tar.bz2
10/11/2007 11:52PM             20 GSHHS_high.tar.gz
10/11/2007 03:59AM     11,258,142 GSHHS_high.zip            DOWNLOADED
10/11/2007 03:59AM          2,782 README.GMT
10/11/2007 03:59AM            174 VERSION.gz
10/11/2007 03:58AM      4,580,551 netcdf.tar.bz2

from : http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/gshhs.html

from : http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/data/gshhs/version1.5/readmegshhs.txt

			G S H H S

Global Self-consistant Hierarchical High-resolution Shorelines

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.5 Sept 14, 2004

Minor update to handle the latest GSHHS v1.3 database.  GSHHS is now
[finally] self-consistent: There are no longer any lingering cross-
overs (internal or external), all polygons are explicitly closed,
and there are no duplicate points along the lines.  The GSHHS header
record has been expanded by one 4-byte element (called version and
set to 3 for all polygons) so that the size of the entire header
structure is a multiple of 8 bytes (now 40 bytes).  The old structure
was not as portable because padding of structures is architecture-
dependent.  To be explicit, each header in v1.3 now consist of the
following variables:

int id;				/* Unique polygon id number, starting at 0 */
int n;				/* Number of points in this polygon */
int level;			/* 1 land, 2 lake, 3 island_in_lake, 4 pond_in_island_in_lake */
int west, east, south, north;	/* min/max extent in micro-degrees */
int area;			/* Area of polygon in 1/10 km^2 */
int version;			/* Polygon version, set to 3
short int greenwich;		/* Greenwich is 1 if Greenwich is crossed */
short int source;		/* 0 = CIA WDBII, 1 = WVS */

We remind users that the polygons are sorted by polygon length (not
area), and that the w/e/s/n values for each polygon are those based on
the full resolution and are simply copied to the other resolutions.
The decimated polygons will in general have a different w/e/s/n set
which you can find if you calculate the actual w/e/s/n values.

Allthough gshhs is distributed as a GMT supplement, it makes no references
to GMT include files or libraries.  If you need to compile gshhs without
placing the gshhs directory under GMT/src you can run

cc gshhs.c -O2 -lm -o gshhs
cc gshhs_dp.c -O2 -lm -o gshhs_dp

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.4 Sept 5, 2000

Now GSHHS source code is distributed as a GMT supplement.  The data
may be obtained separately from the SOEST or NGDC web sites as before.
The FLIP macro is no longer needed as the programs will determine if
swab'ing is required.  Do no use dd on the data.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.3 Nov 8, 1999

Now all code and data files are explicitly distributed under the
GNU Public License, see file COPYING for more details.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.2 May 18, 1999

Made programs POSIX.1 compliant and added binary open for DOS.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.1, April 30, 1996

Paul Wessel, G&G, SOEST, U of Hawaii (pwessel@hawaii.edu)
Walter H. F. Smith, NOAA Geosciences Lab (walter@raptor.grdl.noaa.gov)

Ref: Wessel, P., and W. H. F. Smith, 1996, A global self-consistent,
        hierarchical, high-resolution shoreline database, J. Geophys.
        Res., 101, 8741-8743.

For details on data processing etc. we refer you to that reference.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
This README file explains the usage of the gshhs data sets.  The
archive consists of the following files (after you unzip the compressed
files using bzip2 -d):

Name		Content
--------------------------------------------------------------------
README		This file
gshhs.h		Header file for programs
gshhs.c		Program to extract ASCII data
gshhs_dp.c	Program to decimate polygons
gshhs_f.b	Full resolution data
gshhs_h.b	High resolution data
gshhs_i.b	Intermediate resolution data
gshhs_l.b	Low resolution data
gshhs_c.b	Crude resolution data

In addition, the following program was supplied by Simon Cox (simon@ned.dem.csiro.au)
and can be used to import the *.b files into a GRASS database:

gshhstograss.c	Import *.b into GRASS GIS database

All the *.b file share the same file structure; thus the gshhs program can
read and extract data from any of the files.  The program's purpose is
simply to demonstrate how a programmer may access the data.  Presumably,
the user wants to access the data from within his/her own programs.
If plotting the data is the only purpose, we strongly recommend you
instead use the GMT package which comes with the same data and tools for
plotting filled landmasses, coastlines, political borders, and rivers.
	The file(s) contain several successive logical blocks of the form

<polygon header>
<polygon points>

Each header consist of the following variables:

int id;				/* Unique polygon id number, starting at 0 */
int n;				/* Number of points in this polygon */
int level;			/* 1 land, 2 lake, 3 island_in_lake, 4 pond_in_island_in_lake */
int west, east, south, north;	/* min/max extent in micro-degrees */
int area;			/* Area of polygon in 1/10 km^2 */
short int greenwich;		/* Greenwich is 1 if Greenwich is crossed */
short int source;		/* 0 = CIA WDBII, 1 = WVS */

Here, int is 4-byte integers and short means 2-byte integers.

The polygon points are stored as n successive records of the form

int	x;	/* longitude of a point in micro-degrees */
int	y;	/* latitude of a point in micro-degrees */

On some systems, the byte order is swapped relative to the order used on
a Sun workstation (on which the current data were processed).  To
determine if you need to swap the byte pairs, do the following test:

1. Compile gshhs
2. Run gshhs gshhs_c.b | head -1	# This shows the 1st line of output
3. If the output does not look exactly like the next line:

P      0    1240 1 W 79793839.900 -17.53378 190.32600 -34.83044  77.71625

   you most likely need to swap the byte-pairs.  Simply recompile gsggs with
  the switch -DFLIP and see if that did the trick.
4. If all fails you may email one of the authors for advice.

Compile the two programs as follows (with or without the -DFLIP switch):

cc -O gshhs.c -o gshhs [-DFLIP]
cc -O gshhs_dp.c -o gshhs_dp -lm [-DFLIP]

[and optionally cc -O -o gshhstograss gshhstograss.c -lm [-DFLIP]]

We have provided 5 different resolution of the data which should
satisfy just about any user.  The [h,i,l,c]-versions were
derived from the gshhs_f.b full resolution file using the
Douglas-Peucker algorithm as implemented in gshhs_dp.c  The
tolerances used were:

File		Content			Tolerance
-------------------------------------------------
gshhs_h.c	High resolution		0.2 km
gshhs_i.c	Interm. resolution	1.0 km
gshhs_l.c	Low resolution		5.0 km
gshhs_c.c	Crude resolution	25  km

However, should you need to decimate the full data set using a
different tolerance you can use the program gshhs_dp to do so:

gshhs_dp gshhs_f.b your_tolerance_in_km newfile.b

gshhs.c can then read the resulting newfile.b
[Note that output from gshhs_dp WILL NOT need byte swapping since
it is created on your machine].

The Douglas-Peucker routine implemented in gshhs_dp was kindly
provided by Dr. Gary J. Robinson, Environmental Systems Science Centre,
University of Reading, Reading, UK (gazza@mail.nerc-nutis.ac.uk).

Good Luck,
Paul Wessel and Walter. H. F. Smith

GMT URL:   http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu


