MIF files are also known as MapInfo Interchange Format files, and often end in a .mif suffix. This format — developed and used by MapInfo for the export of maps and data — contains the data necessary for plotting map features (such as points, lines, or polygons) on a map. MIF files are often accompanied by MID files. MID files contain data attributes, but are not a mandatory addition to the MIF file format.
Specifications
A complete MIF dataset contains information about a map's features. This example of a 2-digit ZIP code file of the Netherlands contains the following specifications:
The first 3 lines contain the header information
The 4th line defines the projection of the table
The 5th line specifies the number of associated data attributes and shows the number of columns in the dataset.
The 6th – 9th lines define the type and length of every column. In this example, the MIF file contains the following columns: "pc2", "cartodb_id", "created_at" and "updated_at".
The 10th line contains "Data" — the start of the GIS data.
The 11th line contains the type of each object. The most common types of objects used in MIF files are: Point, Line, Polyline, and Region. This example contains "Region" objects.
The 12th line contains the number of coordinates which will eventually create a Region on the map.
The following 331 lines contain the coordinates for the 2-digit ZIP code areas on the map.
The last 2 lines contain the style of the objects.
To add extra information to the map features you'll need the following optional file:
MID file (.mid) - The MID-file often contains data that is associated with a specific GIS object. These MID-files are stored in a csv format with no column titles.
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