What is the best way to read, represent and render map data?

Question

I am interested in writing a simplistic navigation application as a pet project. After searching around for free map-data I have settled on the US Census Bureau TIGER 2007 Line

Answer 1

One solution is to use MapXtreme. They have API's for Java and C#. The API is able to load these files and render them.

For Java:

http://www.mapinfo.com/products/developer-tools/desktop%2c-mobile-%26-internet-offering/mapxtreme-java

For .NET:

http://www.mapinfo.com/products/developer-tools/desktop%2c-mobile-%26-internet-offering/mapxtreme-2008

I used this solution in a Desktop application and it worked well. It offers a lot more that only rendering information.

Now doing this from scratch could take quite a while. They do have an evaluation version that you can download. I think it just prints "MAPXTREME" over the map as a watermark, but it is completely usable otherwise