I recently came across this blog post www.gnuplotting.org/plotting-the-world/ that used a file that holds a basic map of the world. Is there a name for this kind of data. Also is there a repository of similar but higher resolution data.
Direct link to data:
www.gnuplotting.org/data/world.dat
Best Answer
The world.dat file is a file format specifically for GnuPlot. I haven't heard of it in use anywhere else and I couldn't find anything.
In a more recent blog post on that same site, the author talks about updating the world.dat file with better data - specifically from Natural Earth. Since the author starts with shape files, this same data flow could be used on pretty much anything as the shape file format is pretty ubiquitous.