0.7-14	(see ChangeLog for more details) Depecating direct access to Map objectswhich will be removed from the namespace very soon. Started on merging readShape* and write*Shape functions
0.7-1	GSHHS binary file reading support changed from release 1.3 to 1.5 and shipped coarse shorelines changed to 1.5, released 3 April 2007
0.6-19	changed sp access to *apply and slot
0.6-18	Change shapelib license from MIT to LGPL
0.6-17	Added gcDestination based on contributions from Eric Archer and a list thread for finding a longlat destination given a longlat starting point and bearing, and elide methods to re-scale, reflect, translate and shift coordinates, permitting their relative positions to be retained but their actual locations to be (moderately) masked; a new version of pointLabel from Tom Short is also included
0.6-16	pass through max_nchar to write.dbf() - thanks to Don MacQueen, updated sp2Mondrian to new format polygon files (with argument to use old format)
0.6-15	map2* error when the final two coordintes in the input object are NAs - gambia.borders
0.6-14	added .spatstat_check hack to "SpatialPolygons" to "owin" coercion, and corrected erroneous code for writing line shapefiles (multiple line segments not handled at all until now); write.polylistShape(..., force=TRUE) now default to set nDims attribute on polylist for passing to 3D polygon shapefile.
0.6-13	Added pointLabel function contributed by Tom Short
0.6-9	Added skeleton readGPS function using external gpsbabel through system, thanks to Patrick Giraudoux.
0.6-7	Added GE_SpatialGrid and kmlOverlay preparation of PNG image overlays for Google Earth made by plotting out using the PNG graphics device, suggested by Duncan Golicher and David Forrest.
0.6-6	Added im object exchange with spatstat, changed sun ephemerides documentation to single page ?"sun-methods".
0.6-1	Added sun ephemerides by Sebastian P. Luque. In addition, code from off-CRAN packages on the r-spatial sourceforge repository has been added to maptools. This code includes reading GSHHS shoreline data, importing maps package line and polygon objects to Spatial* formats, importing ArcInfo vector data through the RArcInfo package into Spatial* formats, exporting Spatial* objects tp PBSmapping format, exchanging window and point objects with the spatstat package, and using the gpclib package for topology on polygons. The relationship with these packages is given as "Suggests:", so their installation is not required unless the specific functions they interface are used.
0.5-16	Fixed bug in dotsInPolys() for returned NULL point objects.
0.5-13	Passing through 3rd dimension in reading POINTZ shapefiles (bug report thanks to Michael Toews), POINTZ are also now written for 3D point coordinates.
0.5-12	Added repair= argument to read.shape(), readShape*() functions, and bug fixes to prevent problems caused by shapefiles with malformed *.shx files; the repair= argument is FALSE by default, equivalent to function behaviour until now, but when TRUE, it tries to repair malformed *.shx files typically found in data provided by Geolytics Inc. Bug report thanks to Jon Wakefield.
0.5-11	sp2WB now no longer emits 1e5 style coordinates, which WinBUGS cannot read; readAsciiGrid and writeAsciiGrid now have dec= arguments to cater for unusual locale handling in ArcGIS 9 (ArcGIS 8 and ArcView 3.2 read "." even in "," decimal mark locales, ArcGIS 9 is not as predictable); trackAzimuth is a wrapper for gzAzimuth to give directions along a track.
0.5-9	Added azimuth-finding function, a function to output polygon maps for Mondrian, and made plot.Map deprecated; a fuzz factor has been added to writeAsciiGrid() to force cell resolution to equality if the difference is less than the square root of machine precision.
0.5-6	Added guard functionality and traps for malformed polylist objects and force= argument to write.polylistShape(), thanks to excellent bug report from Marian Eriksson.
0.5-5	Added function sp2tmap to create a data frame for export to Stata's tmap function from SpatialPolygons objects
0.5-4	Added function sp2WB() to w                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       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