I do extensive work on the output of this tool with Inkscape, the free SVG editor. That’s where I will create layers and add text, scale bars, legends, etc. As far as my limited understanding goes, layers are a construct of Inkscape built on the SVG standard, but they’re not part of the base SVG spec. I could be wrong there, but when you create a “plain SVG” file from Inkscape, it loses all the layer information.

Objects from the same file will be grouped. There may be more grouping, too, though I can’t recall the details and could be mistaken.

There is much that could be added or improved with this tool. One thing I have done that can be very useful is to support cropping the output of all output objects to a rectangle specified on the command line in the target coordinate system. Prior to that I’d have to either crop individual objects by hand in Inkscape, or define the extent of the view and put up with the overhead of having all these points and lines defined outside the view just wasting resources. I have not uploaded that version, though. Perhaps this conversation will spur me into doing that.

Another outstanding issue is that the tool does not properly handle islands in polygons. That’s probably a problem with the Ogallala Aquifer map if rendered at high resolutions, though the way the data is “layered” in the file takes care of some of that — drawing a shallower region over a deeper region effectively creates that island.

I think you’re misusing “group”. Maybe if I saw your use example. You could post it here or, if you prefer, email it to me at “egb13″ at this domain.

I’ve created a github account called “kbh3rd” with a repository called “shptosvg”. The perl script and an example shellscript that invokes it are the two files currently in the repository. Running “shptosvg.pl -h” gives a fairly lenghty usage summary.

The perl script requires two modules from CPAN to run: Geo::Shapefile and SVG. No other external dependencies exist.

I was considering creating a project on SourceForge. It would be my first, so I’m not bound to that site. I’m not familiar with GitHub. Why would I want to use that instead?

BTW, the new map is at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ogallala_saturated_thickness_1997-sattk97-v2.svg and is used in the Ogallala Aquifer article. (There, I’ve gone and blown my cover and linked this site to another of my online identities. Out of one closet and into another. ;)