SciTools/cartopy — pull request #126 by esc24 (2012-10-29 11:00:17+00:00)
Title: Draft GSHHS coastline artist.

The following code will draw coastlines from the GSHHS shapely file dataset (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/gshhs.html), autoscaling on zoom:
```python
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import cartopy.crs
import cartopy.gshhs

ax = plt.axes(projection=cartopy.crs.PlateCarree())
ax.add_artist(cartopy.gshhs.GSHHSArtist())
plt.show()
```
It's a low level implementation (mpl artist) that would benefit from abstraction for ease of use and extensibility. There are issues around invalid polygons in some projections and an unpleasant line down the centre of Antarctica.

Note there is debug code left to track scaling that needs refinement and loading that needs optimising.