Named annotations in *meta_[clihf].dat files

Hi ladies and gentlemen,

I was wondering how the *.dat files were generated, and if it would be possible to annotate some of them with their names in some standardized format. For instance, for countries, we could append another field after the #bytes value that contains the ISO2 name of the country of the coordinates listed. Then one could build LineCollections for each country and do fun per-country graphing.

Otherwise, we need to use shapefiles -- not all that bad except they might not match the specified resolution or even the data included in basemap.

I'd love to submit patches, but unfortunately there's no rhyme or reason to the internal organization of the *.dat files. I hypothesize having their source will facilitate such a transformation.

Thoughts?

Begin by tracing how the meta_[clihf].dat files are generated and understanding their internal organization, then review the proposed standardized field after the #bytes value. Consider the country ISO2 and LineCollection use cases alongside the existing shapefile approach. Done means the project has a decided, documented format and a clear source or transformation path.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.