killroy - 12:59 pm on Oct 1, 2003 (gmt 0)

Once you buy the maps from your local ministry, the rest is simple. the maps aren'T even that expensive, in my country at least.

You store the map in hi-res in small squares. you have a DB that relates each file with a longitude/latitude pair. You write a finction that takes a location and zoom factor. It calculates the box coordinates then pulls the relevant images, joins them, resizes them and voila you're done. a couple of lines in PHP at the most.

SN