Technical Q&A

OPS 25 - Accessing the Geographical Database in Apple’s Map Control Panel (17-May-1999)


Q: How can I provide my users with a “hook” to access the geographical database in Apple’s “Map” Control Panel from my application?

A: There’s no supported way of accessing the geographical database contained in the “Map” Control Panel. Here are some hints, however (just to satisfy your curiosity):

The data are stored in a resource of type 'CTY#', ID=-4064, in the Map cdev. The resource format is a list of word-aligned (variable length) city entries, preceded by an integer indicating the number of entries. Each entry has the format:

[Integer] length in bytes of the entry

[Longint] latitude in Fract; north = +

[Longint] longitude in Fract; east = +

[Longint] GMT difference in seconds; east = +

[Longint] (reserved; set to 0)

[PascalString] name of the city.


-- Mark Cookson
Worldwide Developer Technical Support

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