I am not sure about your goal. do you mean that you want to evaluate the data in the shape file by creating an *.img with it?
> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:22:03 +0200
> From: marko.makela@iki.fi
> To: mkgmap-dev@lists.mkgmap.org.uk
> Subject: [mkgmap-dev] Generating location bounds info from shape file?
>
> This may be a dumb question, because I do not know any GIS file formats
> (apart from *.osm). But, would it be possible to create the bounds
> information from a shape file that defines administrative boundaries?
> This would allow experimentation before importing hundreds of
> municipality boundaries (1000s of ways and 100s of relations) into OSM.
>
> Marko
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