From jan at intevation.de  Thu Mar  1 09:09:23 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 09:09:23 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] FW: [ESRI-L] ARC - InfoLib availability?
In-Reply-To: <003f01c09bf8$df21c1a0$0d013d0a@gba.gov.ar>; from gpezzuchi@sidic.pol.gba.gov.ar on Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 08:24:35AM -0300
References: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D075308ABC915@raptor.gov.yk.ca> <20010220201402.C32732@abnoba.intevation.de> <003f01c09bf8$df21c1a0$0d013d0a@gba.gov.ar>
Message-ID: <20010301090923.B1203@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hi all,

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 08:24:35AM -0300, Gaston Pezzuchi wrote:
> I have some dead links refering to the EPAFTP were the infolib was supposed
> to be stored and ready to be downloaded... Perhaps someone can contact them
> and ask about it...

I have contacted EPA. The orginal author has left EPA and db2info
is unmaintained now.

But they have now fixed the broken links so that all
the files are downloadable again (thanks to EPA/Ray Peterson):

http://www.epa.gov/r10earth/dbf2info.html

I would be interested if anyone could (and perhaps will) make
use of the code ...

All of it is Public Domain so it is added to FreeGIS.

Cheers

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Mar  1 20:37:21 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 20:37:21 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] tkgeomap 1.5 announced
Message-ID: <20010301203721.H11707@abnoba.intevation.de>

Gordon <gaz at tkgeomap.org> has announce the 1.5
release of tkgeomap.

Haven't had a chance to look at the changes yet.	
	Bernhard
-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)
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From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Mar  1 20:47:31 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Thu,  1 Mar 2001 20:47:31 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Freegis-list] OpenMap 4.1 has been released (fwd)
Message-ID: <20010301194731.BA39B1B73D@abnoba.intevation.de>

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From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Mar  8 14:36:01 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 14:36:01 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] sunclock added to freegis
Message-ID: <20010308143601.C32749@abnoba.intevation.de>

Found sunclock and added it to the freegis.org list,
because of its possible educational value.
We are up to 82 entries now. 36 of them being applications.


http://freshmeat.net/projects/sunclock/

Sunclock is a sophisticated clock for the X Window system. It
displays a map of the Earth and shows which portion is illuminated
by the sun. In addition to providing local time for the default
timezone, it also displays GMT time, legal and solar time of major
cities, their latitude and longitude, sunrise and sunset, and the
mutual distances of arbitrary locations on Earth.  Sunclock can
display meridians, parallels, tropics, and arctic circles. It has
builtin functions that accelerate the speed of time and show the
evolution of seasons. 

                       Version: 3.31
                       License: GPL 
-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)
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From jan at intevation.de  Thu Mar  8 14:40:09 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 14:40:09 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] GeoGratis
In-Reply-To: <3A9A5EB0.488D0369@pobox.com>; from warmerdam@pobox.com on Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 08:48:32AM -0500
References: <3A9A5EB0.488D0369@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20010308144009.A604@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hello Frank, all,

On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 08:48:32AM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Another possible entry in the free data section is the Canadian "GeoGratis" 
> site.  This includes various free datasets from various federal government
> departments.  The licensing terms is generally free with a credit requirement.
> 
>   http://www.geogratis.ca/
> 
> Note, alot of the data I found was in e00 format.  Some data isn't available
> online, but may be ordered for free, or cheaply. 

I emailed Geogratis first time Feb 9th 2000 and
asked them to whether the terms of use (which are not 100% clear to me)
can be interpreted in the way that the data are free, free in the sense of free speech.
I asked again Feb 26th 2001 due to Franks hint.

I never received an answer.
Does anyone on this list has had some contact with Geogratis?

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From warmerdam at pobox.com  Thu Mar  8 14:47:07 2001
From: warmerdam at pobox.com (Frank Warmerdam)
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 08:47:07 -0500
Subject: [Freegis-list] GeoGratis
References: <3A9A5EB0.488D0369@pobox.com> <20010308144009.A604@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <3AA78D5B.D49DC440@pobox.com>

Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> I emailed Geogratis first time Feb 9th 2000 and
> asked them to whether the terms of use (which are not 100% clear to me)
> can be interpreted in the way that the data are free, free in the sense of free speech.
> I asked again Feb 26th 2001 due to Franks hint.
> 
> I never received an answer.
> Does anyone on this list has had some contact with Geogratis?

Jan,

What particular questions do you have?  According to the most prominantely
displayed terms (http://www.geogratis.ca/e_license.html) I think the data
would not qualify as properly free because clause 4 indicates that the
data is not licensed for redistribution via the Internet without modification.

I believe this clause exists because of an ill-advised desire to keep track
of the number of copies being used by tracking the number of copies downloaded.
This helps justify program funding.  

Note that the problem clause does not apply to modified data, so perhaps
someone could stage the interesting datasets modify by translating into 
another file format or something similarly harmless.  

Best regards,

---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerda
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent



From jan at intevation.de  Thu Mar  8 15:33:24 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 15:33:24 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] GeoGratis
In-Reply-To: <3AA78D5B.D49DC440@pobox.com>; from warmerdam@pobox.com on Thu, Mar 08, 2001 at 08:47:07AM -0500
References: <3A9A5EB0.488D0369@pobox.com> <20010308144009.A604@abnoba.intevation.de> <3AA78D5B.D49DC440@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20010308153324.B953@abnoba.intevation.de>

Frank,

On Thu, Mar 08, 2001 at 08:47:07AM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> > I emailed Geogratis first time Feb 9th 2000 and
> > asked them to whether the terms of use (which are not 100% clear to me)
> > can be interpreted in the way that the data are free, free in the sense of free speech.
> > I asked again Feb 26th 2001 due to Franks hint.
> > 
> > I never received an answer.
> > Does anyone on this list has had some contact with Geogratis?
> 
> What particular questions do you have?  According to the most prominantely
> displayed terms (http://www.geogratis.ca/e_license.html) I think the data
> would not qualify as properly free because clause 4 indicates that the
> data is not licensed for redistribution via the Internet without modification.
> 
> I believe this clause exists because of an ill-advised desire to keep track
> of the number of copies being used by tracking the number of copies downloaded.
> This helps justify program funding.  

Yes, I think so, too. But as you state (below) it would be simple to
undermine this :-)

Here is an excerpt of my email to geogratis:

Especially one term concerns me:

"... but Canada retains all ownership interests in the Data."

Does this mean that Canada can cancel the license
agreement at any time as it is possible for most 
proprietary software products such as those by MicroSoft?

If that is true it would mean dependency and an unbearable risk
to use the data and it would certainly not be free in the sense
of free speech.

BTW, is the mandatory prominent permission reference to Canada
in any derived work really
necessary. To my mind it is sufficient to hold the Copyright
and forbid to remove it (which probably is clearified in (1.) ).

> Note that the problem clause does not apply to modified data, so perhaps
> someone could stage the interesting datasets modify by translating into 
> another file format or something similarly harmless.  
:-)

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Mar  8 18:14:40 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 18:14:40 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] updated: gpstrans 0.38, gpspoint 1.010215
Message-ID: <20010308181440.C1669@abnoba.intevation.de>

new version of gpstrans v0.38:

	GPStrans (version 0.38) - release 01/03/03 
	------------------------------------------ 
	* Code clean-up and minor code correction 
	* -z command line option added 
	* setup config support for etrex and other models 
	* prepared the setup to support all garmin models (code) 
	* removed the -tm option. Use setup or -z option 
	* Correct download of waypoints for etrex and other models 
	* Corrected the isblank() to be fully ANSI comliant 

new version of gpspoint 1.010215:

	This release includes support for the waypoint type 100 used by
	older Garmins including the GPS 38 and 45, improvements to the time
   	display, and a Debian package is now available. 





-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)
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From jan at intevation.de  Fri Mar  9 12:20:06 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 12:20:06 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] OGDI 3.1alpha2 Source Released
In-Reply-To: <3A9ACEC9.2E4F8324@pobox.com>; from warmerdam@pobox.com on Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 04:46:49PM -0500
References: <3A9ACEC9.2E4F8324@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20010309122006.A10147@abnoba.intevation.de>

On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 04:46:49PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> The 3i (Information Interoperability Institute) is pleased to 
> announce the first 3i source release for OGDI.  OGDI is the
> Open Geographic Datastore Interface, an application programming
> interface (API) providing local and remote access to geospatial 
> data products in a variety of raster and vector formats.  
> 
> The open source OGDI core technology, and the OGDI interface standard
> is currently maintained by the 3i. 

>   http://ogdi.sourceforge.net/

I skimmed through the diverse licenses involved in OGDI
(which are nicely collected in the License file) and
detected at least one license which is not Free Software
(though the source is open, which again is a different thing
to Open Source, alas, this term has produce a lot confusion):

include/win32/heapagnt.h (and others):
/* heapagnt.h -- HeapAgent (tm) public C/C++ header file
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1991-1996 by Arthur D. Applegate.  All Rights Reserved.
 * All Rights Reserved.
 *
 * No part of this source code may be copied, modified or reproduced
 * in any form without retaining the above copyright notice.
 * This source code, or source code derived from it, may not be redistributed
 * without express written permission of the author.

Thus we will not add OGDI to FreeGIS, because redistributing
the code in some cases can be an illegal act.

OGDI is a _very_ interesting tool and it is __almost__ Free Software.
To my mind it is worth the efford to resolve the remaining (hopefully
only few) license issues.

BTW, does SourceForge allow to place non-free Software outside their
nonfree section? Just a thought that comes to my mind.

Frank, can you perhaps estimate the work that needs to be done for
resolving the license issues? I can offer assitance in writing to
authors.

However, the free GIS programmers of you have still the opportunity
to pick code from OGDI which is covered by Free Software licenses.
It looks like the most helpful code elements are all Free Software.

An option to add OGDI to FreeGIS would be to publish a package
without the non-free elements (yes, of course that package would not
be compilable).

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From devakigce at yahoo.com  Fri Mar  9 12:31:17 2001
From: devakigce at yahoo.com (dev aki)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 03:31:17 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Freegis-list] gIS data
Message-ID: <20010309113117.6308.qmail@web1204.mail.yahoo.com>

Hi 
can any one tell me where i can get the Gis data in
DXF format or any other format freely
regards
devaki

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. 
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/



From jan at intevation.de  Fri Mar  9 12:33:39 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 12:33:39 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
In-Reply-To: <00fa01c09cea$70ab03b0$0f0110ac@felipe>; from fnievinski@cpovo.net on Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 01:13:45PM -0300
References: <20010221180145.A3953@abnoba.intevation.de> <00fa01c09cea$70ab03b0$0f0110ac@felipe>
Message-ID: <20010309123339.A14686@abnoba.intevation.de>

On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 01:13:45PM -0300, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote:
> It would be good to have a small paragraph in the main page (above the
> software entries) explaining the project (ala About FreeGIS page).

I am not sure whether we should reserve space on the enrtry
page for something that should be self-explaining.

Perhaps a suitable sub title would make what you have in mind.
Any idea, comment?

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From smaffulli at inwind.it  Fri Mar  9 14:49:40 2001
From: smaffulli at inwind.it (Stefano Maffulli)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 14:49:40 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
In-Reply-To: <20010309123339.A14686@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <NEBBIAALPMAAPJAHIGFPKEDPCEAA.smaffulli@inwind.it>

Hi all,

I think it would be very important to explain in a few paragraphs the aims
and meaning of the FreeGIS initiative. This is because not so many people
can already discern Free (as in Free speech) from Free (as in Free bier)
<personal rant>Too bad English does not provide a unique way to identify
these concepts</>

In other words, FreeGIS is not as self explanatory as we may think. And I
especially think that there is not enough knowledge of the whole Free
Software movement in the public administration, in high school education,
in SMEs. IMHO we still need to push the concept of Free as we mean it (also
since M$ started to attack the FS movement, read Stallman's response
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-03-02-004-20-OP-CY-MS).

Regards
Stefano Maffulli

*********************************************
Institute for Systems, Informatics and Safety
TP 650 - Joint Research Centre,
21020 Ispra (VA), Italy
work: http://commongis.jrc.it/
Milano Linux User Group Vice-president: http://www.milug.org
*********************************************


>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: freegis-list-admin at intevation.de
>  [mailto:freegis-list-admin at intevation.de]On Behalf Of Jan-Oliver Wagner
>  Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 12:34 PM
>  To: freegis-list at intevation.de
>  Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
>
>
>  On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 01:13:45PM -0300, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote:
>  > It would be good to have a small paragraph in the main page (above the
>  > software entries) explaining the project (ala About FreeGIS page).
>
>  I am not sure whether we should reserve space on the enrtry
>  page for something that should be self-explaining.
>
>  Perhaps a suitable sub title would make what you have in mind.
>  Any idea, comment?
>
>  Jan
>
>  --
>  Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/
>
>  Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
>  FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Freegis-list mailing list
>  Freegis-list at intevation.de
>  http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list




From Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca  Fri Mar  9 20:00:02 2001
From: Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca (Matt.Wilkie)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 11:00:02 -0800 
Subject: [Freegis-list] GEN: about.com GIS software poll
Message-ID: <6DD7370C9452D31192A10008C75D07530909E3FB@raptor.gov.yk.ca>

Anybody who likes to play with polls might want to put
a vote in at 
http://gis.about.com/science/gis/library/misc/blpoll.htm
for which GIS software you use.


-matt

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Wilkie * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS
http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/
-----------------------------------------------------------------



From fnievinski at cpovo.net  Sat Mar 10 02:36:34 2001
From: fnievinski at cpovo.net (Felipe G. Nievinski)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 22:36:34 -0300
Subject: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
References: <NEBBIAALPMAAPJAHIGFPKEDPCEAA.smaffulli@inwind.it>
Message-ID: <016f01c0a902$8af7d3a0$0300000a@felipe>

Maybe a phrase would be enough to explain and make it clear.
My suggestion:

"You have the freedom to copy, study, change, and redistribute the Free GIS
Software and Free Geo-Data here indicated."


Just a thought.

Cheers,
Felipe.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefano Maffulli" <smaffulli at inwind.it>
To: <freegis-list at intevation.de>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 10:49 AM
Subject: RE: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered


> Hi all,
>
> I think it would be very important to explain in a few paragraphs the aims
> and meaning of the FreeGIS initiative. This is because not so many people
> can already discern Free (as in Free speech) from Free (as in Free bier)
> <personal rant>Too bad English does not provide a unique way to identify
> these concepts</>
>
> In other words, FreeGIS is not as self explanatory as we may think. And I
> especially think that there is not enough knowledge of the whole Free
> Software movement in the public administration, in high school education,
> in SMEs. IMHO we still need to push the concept of Free as we mean it
(also
> since M$ started to attack the FS movement, read Stallman's response
> http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-03-02-004-20-OP-CY-MS).
>
> Regards
> Stefano Maffulli
>
> *********************************************
> Institute for Systems, Informatics and Safety
> TP 650 - Joint Research Centre,
> 21020 Ispra (VA), Italy
> work: http://commongis.jrc.it/
> Milano Linux User Group Vice-president: http://www.milug.org
> *********************************************
>
>
> >  -----Original Message-----
> >  From: freegis-list-admin at intevation.de
> >  [mailto:freegis-list-admin at intevation.de]On Behalf Of Jan-Oliver Wagner
> >  Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 12:34 PM
> >  To: freegis-list at intevation.de
> >  Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
> >
> >
> >  On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 01:13:45PM -0300, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote:
> >  > It would be good to have a small paragraph in the main page (above
the
> >  > software entries) explaining the project (ala About FreeGIS page).
> >
> >  I am not sure whether we should reserve space on the enrtry
> >  page for something that should be self-explaining.
> >
> >  Perhaps a suitable sub title would make what you have in mind.
> >  Any idea, comment?
> >
> >  Jan
> >
> >  --
> >  Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/
> >
> >  Intevation GmbH                    http://intevation.de/
> >  FreeGIS                                http://freegis.org/
> >
> >  _______________________________________________
> >  Freegis-list mailing list
> >  Freegis-list at intevation.de
> >  http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freegis-list mailing list
> Freegis-list at intevation.de
> http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list




From warmerdam at pobox.com  Mon Mar 12 00:03:39 2001
From: warmerdam at pobox.com (Frank Warmerdam)
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 18:03:39 -0500
Subject: [Freegis-list] OGDI Licensing Concerns
References: <3A9ACEC9.2E4F8324@pobox.com> <20010309122006.A10147@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <3AAC044B.E4ABC09D@pobox.com>

Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 04:46:49PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> > The 3i (Information Interoperability Institute) is pleased to
> > announce the first 3i source release for OGDI.  OGDI is the
> > Open Geographic Datastore Interface, an application programming
> > interface (API) providing local and remote access to geospatial
> > data products in a variety of raster and vector formats.
> >
> > The open source OGDI core technology, and the OGDI interface standard
> > is currently maintained by the 3i.
> 
> >   http://ogdi.sourceforge.net/
> 
> I skimmed through the diverse licenses involved in OGDI
> (which are nicely collected in the License file) and
> detected at least one license which is not Free Software
> (though the source is open, which again is a different thing
> to Open Source, alas, this term has produce a lot confusion):
> 
> include/win32/heapagnt.h (and others):
> /* heapagnt.h -- HeapAgent (tm) public C/C++ header file
>  *
>  * Copyright (C) 1991-1996 by Arthur D. Applegate.  All Rights Reserved.
>  * All Rights Reserved.
>  *
>  * No part of this source code may be copied, modified or reproduced
>  * in any form without retaining the above copyright notice.
>  * This source code, or source code derived from it, may not be redistributed
>  * without express written permission of the author.
> 
> Thus we will not add OGDI to FreeGIS, because redistributing
> the code in some cases can be an illegal act.
> 
> OGDI is a _very_ interesting tool and it is __almost__ Free Software.
> To my mind it is worth the efford to resolve the remaining (hopefully
> only few) license issues.
> 
> BTW, does SourceForge allow to place non-free Software outside their
> nonfree section? Just a thought that comes to my mind.
> 
> Frank, can you perhaps estimate the work that needs to be done for
> resolving the license issues? I can offer assitance in writing to
> authors.
> 
> However, the free GIS programmers of you have still the opportunity
> to pick code from OGDI which is covered by Free Software licenses.
> It looks like the most helpful code elements are all Free Software.
> 
> An option to add OGDI to FreeGIS would be to publish a package
> without the non-free elements (yes, of course that package would not
> be compilable).

Jan, 

I have reviewed the OGDI code, and was successful in removed a number of
files in the include/win32 directory.  While they may have once been used
for some purpose, I find they aren't actually used anymore, even on Windows.
I have updated the LICENSE file to reflect two licenses that are no longer
issues (including the heapagent one), and issued an OGDI 3.1alpha3 release
without the license problems.

I have skimmed the other licenses, and I don't think there are any other
real problems.  If there is please let me know and I will do what I can to
clean them up.  It is the 3i's intention for OGDI to meet the OSD. 

Best regards,

---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerda
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent



From jan at intevation.de  Mon Mar 12 13:31:24 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:31:24 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] gIS data
In-Reply-To: <20010309113117.6308.qmail@web1204.mail.yahoo.com>; from devakigce@yahoo.com on Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 03:31:17AM -0800
References: <20010309113117.6308.qmail@web1204.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20010312133124.C24772@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hello,

On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 03:31:17AM -0800, dev aki wrote:
> can any one tell me where i can get the Gis data in
> DXF format or any other format freely

which sort of GIS data are you looking for?
There are some links on the FreeGIS page
http://freegis.org/#GeoData
which might help.

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From razi at kfupm.edu.sa  Mon Mar 12 13:37:24 2001
From: razi at kfupm.edu.sa (Mohammed Raziuddin)
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:37:24 +0300
Subject: [Freegis-list] (no subject)
Message-ID: <002c01c0aaf1$31448bf0$1700130a@gisadmin>

unsubscribe
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From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu  Mon Mar 12 18:10:23 2001
From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer)
Date: 12 Mar 2001 09:10:23 -0800
Subject: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
In-Reply-To: <016f01c0a902$8af7d3a0$0300000a@felipe>
References: <NEBBIAALPMAAPJAHIGFPKEDPCEAA.smaffulli@inwind.it> 
	<016f01c0a902$8af7d3a0$0300000a@felipe>
Message-ID: <20010312170903.DF15B2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu>

On 09 Mar 2001 22:36:34 -0300, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote:
> Maybe a phrase would be enough to explain and make it clear.
> My suggestion:
> 
> "You have the freedom to copy, study, change, and redistribute the Free GIS
> Software and Free Geo-Data here indicated."
> 


Whoa,

be careful! Free-GIS should not make that claim. It's up to users to
read licenses and decide for themselves what rights they have. Don't
leave yourselves open to legal responsibilities. I agree that a brief
blurb about the project at the top of the page would be nice and then a
hyperlinked list of sections (with explanations) i.e.

The FreeGIS Project

Dedicated to gathering as much information about documentation, data and
software useful for processing of Geospatial information and licensed
under restrictions designed to maintain Free acess to these resources.

Documentation:
     These are documents useful for processing or developing data and
software that conform to open standards and can be re-distribted freely.

Data:
     These are collections of data believed to be liscensed so as to
guarantee the rights of users to redistribute the data freely.

Software:
     Applications: You get the picture :-)
     Libraries: 
     Conversion Tools:

***********************
Data:
***********************
Alsaka data
Blah, Blah



This is not elegant language or setup but it could be a nice setup for
newcommers to understand the project quickly. It also has the side
effect of reducing the width of the left hand frame.

cheers,
adrian





From bernhard at intevation.de  Mon Mar 12 18:41:43 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 18:41:43 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] freegis entries ordered
In-Reply-To: <20010312170903.DF15B2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu>; from acuster@nature.berkeley.edu on Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 09:10:23AM -0800
References: <NEBBIAALPMAAPJAHIGFPKEDPCEAA.smaffulli@inwind.it> <016f01c0a902$8af7d3a0$0300000a@felipe> <20010312170903.DF15B2211F@nopause.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <20010312184143.A27326@abnoba.intevation.de>

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 09:10:23AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote:
> On 09 Mar 2001 22:36:34 -0300, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote:
> > Maybe a phrase would be enough to explain and make it clear.
> > My suggestion:
> > 
> > "You have the freedom to copy, study, change, and redistribute the Free GIS
> > Software and Free Geo-Data here indicated."

> be careful! Free-GIS should not make that claim. It's up to users to
> read licenses and decide for themselves what rights they have. Don't
> leave yourselves open to legal responsibilities. 

Well we _want_ to list Free Software and Data.
So it might be okay to put a small description of our intention up.
We cannot be held legally resonsible if our judgement of the
freedom of licenses is wrong for some reason.
So we have to make these two points, too.

	Bernhard


-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                         (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure            (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                            	  (fsfeurope.org)
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From CCate23519 at aol.com  Tue Mar 13 01:56:48 2001
From: CCate23519 at aol.com (CCate23519@aol.com)
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:56:48 EST
Subject: [Freegis-list] WHAT IS THE BEST BOOK TO BUY TO LEARN TO PROGRAM THE GIS
Message-ID: <3e.8a4a3cd.27deca50@aol.com>

Thanks, Criaig



From gis.guide at about.com  Tue Mar 13 01:57:32 2001
From: gis.guide at about.com (Caitlin Dempsey)
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:57:32 -0800
Subject: [Freegis-list] WHAT IS THE BEST BOOK TO BUY TO LEARN TO PROGRAM THE GIS
References: <3e.8a4a3cd.27deca50@aol.com>
Message-ID: <009401c0ab58$96217260$e56dbb26@asimba>

What GIS software do you want to customize?  That will affect the type of
programming language you'll need to learn.

Cheers,
Caitlin
________________________________
Caitlin Dempsey
GIS Guide at About
http://gis.about.com
mailto: gis.guide at about.com
----- Original Message -----
From: <CCate23519 at aol.com>
To: <freegis-list at intevation.de>
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 4:56 PM
Subject: [Freegis-list] WHAT IS THE BEST BOOK TO BUY TO LEARN TO PROGRAM THE
GIS


> Thanks, Criaig
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freegis-list mailing list
> Freegis-list at intevation.de
> http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
>




From bernhard at intevation.de  Tue Mar 13 14:23:36 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 14:23:36 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] ANN: GRASS User GROUP (GAV) formed in DE!
Message-ID: <20010313142336.E10332@abnoba.intevation.de>

							March the 12th, 2001
Dear Grass-Community, Dear GIS-Community,

in the last year we saw GRASS development flourish 
and GIS technology getting more and more into the public focus.
GRASS is in a very good position 
as the most powerful free software GIS out there 
together with its strong and healthy user base.

Still most people who use GIS do not know about GRASS or
have no idea of which high quality especially the new GRASS releases are.

That is why we are happy to announce 
the formation of a new grass user group:

	GRASS Anwender-Vereinigung e.V (GAV)

which is a tax-exempt charity organisation 
located in Hannover, Germany.

The main focus of GAV will be on German speaking GRASS users.
Our intention was to found a legal entity which can 
serve as an official meeting place for GRASS promotion. 
It is a lot easier to ask for publicity or funding,
if you have a recognised organisation. We also hope to provide 
a place where the public can get informed about GRASS 
and free GIS in general.

It would be nice if we could be as successful as the German
TeX User Group "Dante e.V." which has done a great job in
securing the long term availability of TeX and LaTeX.

Our plans are to:
	- prepare mailings to Universities 
	- promote GRASS in Germany at conferences
	- create teaching materials and online courses
	- collect money to fund GRASS development

We hope to make GAV to a valueable addition to the GRASS community. 
If you are interested to become a member or want to know 
more about GAV, check the webpages (mainly in Germany):

	 www.grass-verein.de


For the GAV founders,
March the 12th, 2001
Osnabr?ck, Germany
	Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de>


What is GRASS?
-------------

Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS)
is very powerful GIS which has seen almost 20 years of development.
It is used for data management, image processing, graphics production, 
spatial modelling, and visualization of many types of data (raster and vector). 
GRASS is free software released unter the GNU General Public License (GPL). 

	http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/

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From shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com  Tue Mar 20 12:57:39 2001
From: shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com (Shankar Narayanan.K , STC Chennai)
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 17:27:39 +0530
Subject: [Freegis-list] Free Internet Map Servers
Message-ID: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B20315C4E2@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>

Hi all,
         I would like to know which is the best application server available
in the market.It can be freely available or having an evaluation version.BTW
we are also trying to develop our own GIS application.Can anybody give me
the url for the site that provides development support from the scratch.

Regards,
Shankar
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From bernhard at intevation.de  Wed Mar 21 10:59:35 2001
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 10:59:35 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Freegis-list] OpenMap 4.1.1 has been released! (fwd)
Message-ID: <20010321095935.618F01B738@abnoba.intevation.de>

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Subject: OpenMap 4.1.1 has been released!
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 20:56:56 GMT
Size: 3092
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From jan at intevation.de  Wed Mar 21 12:02:40 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 12:02:40 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] first free (GPLed) EDBS reader now available
Message-ID: <20010321120240.C8487@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hello everybody,

some of you may remember the EDBS discussion several
weeks ago. No EDBS (that is a GI format mainly used
in Germany for ATKIS) reader was available as Free
Software.

Our discussion and the following contacts lead
to the release of Java source codes for handling
EDBS: EDBSjavaReader 1.0.0.

Thanks go to Markus Neteler for the intial contact
and of course to the authors Stephan Falke and
Carsten Kleiner (both from computer science
department at University of Hannover).
(360 KByte)

This package is unmaintained and looking for
Currently you will need Java (of course) and
Oracle. It should be possible to substitute
Oracle by other (free) databases with some work.

Oh and: all the documentation is in German.
Please leave a note if anyone picks up the code
and does some maintenance (or just a web site, ...).

Cheers

        Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From jan at intevation.de  Wed Mar 21 12:08:08 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 12:08:08 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] first free (GPLed) EDBS reader now available
In-Reply-To: <20010321120240.C8487@abnoba.intevation.de>; from jan@intevation.de on Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 12:02:40PM +0100
References: <20010321120240.C8487@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <20010321120808.A8727@abnoba.intevation.de>

On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 12:02:40PM +0100, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> EDBS: EDBSjavaReader 1.0.0.
> (360 KByte)

download URL did not made into this announcement :-( :
ftp://intevation.de/freegis/misc/EDBSjavaReader-1.0.0.tar.gz 

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From Timothy.Keitt at StonyBrook.Edu  Wed Mar 21 16:28:57 2001
From: Timothy.Keitt at StonyBrook.Edu (Timothy H. Keitt)
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 10:28:57 -0500
Subject: [Freegis-list] OpenMap 4.1.1 has been released! (fwd)
References: <20010321095935.618F01B738@abnoba.intevation.de>
Message-ID: <3AB8C8B9.5070401@StonyBrook.Edu>

OpenMap is a great package.  I can't help but think that it would widely 
adopted in the community if it were released under the GPL.

Tim

Bernhard Reiter wrote:

> 
> We've released version 4.1.1 of OpenMap(tm) at
> 
> 	http://openmap.bbn.com (or http://www.openmap.org)
> 
> OpenMap is open source software.  This is a patchlevel/bugfix release only - 
> code relying on the OpenMap 4.1 API should also run with OpenMap 4.1.1 without
> changes.  New for this release:
> 


-- 
Timothy H. Keitt
Department of Ecology and Evolution
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Phone: 631-632-1101, FAX: 631-632-7626
http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/keitt/




From warmerdam at pobox.com  Wed Mar 21 19:01:03 2001
From: warmerdam at pobox.com (Frank Warmerdam)
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 13:01:03 -0500
Subject: [Freegis-list] US National Atlas Data
Message-ID: <3AB8EC5F.AF546242@pobox.com>

Folks, 

I think the US National Atlas information is a candidate for listing on
the freegis pages.

  http://www.nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html

The data is in the public domain as indicated by the national atlas FAQ:

"13. I've noticed the little registered trademark symbol in "The National 
Atlas of the United States of America?." Does this mean that National Atlas 
data is proprietary?

No. Nearly all information collected by the federal government is in the 
public domain and use of data produced under this project will not be 
restricted in any way. Both "National Atlas of the United States?" and "The 
National Atlas of the United States of America? are registered trademarks 
of the United States Department of the Interior. The USGS has been publishing 
National Atlas products since 1970 and has simply taken action to trademark 
this term to incorporate all new graphic and electronic products of The 
National Atlas of the United States of America?"

The data is in SDTS, E00, Shape and TIFF formats. 

Best regards,

---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerda
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent



From shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com  Fri Mar 23 07:44:19 2001
From: shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com (Shankar Narayanan.K , STC Chennai)
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 12:14:19 +0530
Subject: [Freegis-list] Shape File Reader
Message-ID: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031B89C1@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>

Hi,
    We are in need of reading the contents of ".shp" file.And we are using
java for this.The problem is the .shp file is having a variable "byte
order".For some record contents the byte order is "big endian" and for some
it is "little endian".I can read the big endian types but not the little
endian ones.I am getting wrong values that dont match with the file
specifications.Can anybody out there help me on deciding which file reader
class I should use in java to read all the .shp file contents.Thanks in
advance.

Regards,
Shankar

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	freegis-list-request at intevation.de
> [SMTP:freegis-list-request at intevation.de]
> Sent:	Thursday, March 22, 2001 11:01 AM
> To:	freegis-list at intevation.de
> Subject:	Freegis-list digest, Vol 1 #131 - 4 msgs
> 
> Send Freegis-list mailing list submissions to
> 	freegis-list at intevation.de
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	freegis-list-request at intevation.de
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	freegis-list-admin at intevation.de
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Freegis-list digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. first free (GPLed) EDBS reader now available (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
>    2. Re: first free (GPLed) EDBS reader now available (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
>    3. Re: OpenMap 4.1.1 has been released! (fwd) (Timothy H. Keitt)
>    4. US National Atlas Data (Frank Warmerdam)
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 12:02:40 +0100
> From: Jan-Oliver Wagner <jan at intevation.de>
> To: FreeGIS Mailing List <freegis-list at intevation.de>
> Subject: [Freegis-list] first free (GPLed) EDBS reader now available
> 
> Hello everybody,
> 
> some of you may remember the EDBS discussion several
> weeks ago. No EDBS (that is a GI format mainly used
> in Germany for ATKIS) reader was available as Free
> Software.
> 
> Our discussion and the following contacts lead
> to the release of Java source codes for handling
> EDBS: EDBSjavaReader 1.0.0.
> 
> Thanks go to Markus Neteler for the intial contact
> and of course to the authors Stephan Falke and
> Carsten Kleiner (both from computer science
> department at University of Hannover).
> (360 KByte)
> 
> This package is unmaintained and looking for
> Currently you will need Java (of course) and
> Oracle. It should be possible to substitute
> Oracle by other (free) databases with some work.
> 
> Oh and: all the documentation is in German.
> Please leave a note if anyone picks up the code
> and does some maintenance (or just a web site, ...).
> 
> Cheers
> 
>         Jan
> 
> -- 
> Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/
> 
> Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
> FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 12:08:08 +0100
> From: Jan-Oliver Wagner <jan at intevation.de>
> To: FreeGIS Mailing List <freegis-list at intevation.de>
> Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] first free (GPLed) EDBS reader now available
> 
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 12:02:40PM +0100, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> > EDBS: EDBSjavaReader 1.0.0.
> > (360 KByte)
> 
> download URL did not made into this announcement :-( :
> ftp://intevation.de/freegis/misc/EDBSjavaReader-1.0.0.tar.gz 
> 
> Jan
> 
> -- 
> Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/
> 
> Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
> FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 10:28:57 -0500
> From: "Timothy H. Keitt" <Timothy.Keitt at StonyBrook.Edu>
> Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
> To: freegis-list at intevation.de
> Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] OpenMap 4.1.1 has been released! (fwd)
> 
> OpenMap is a great package.  I can't help but think that it would widely 
> adopted in the community if it were released under the GPL.
> 
> Tim
> 
> Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 
> > 
> > We've released version 4.1.1 of OpenMap(tm) at
> > 
> > 	http://openmap.bbn.com (or http://www.openmap.org)
> > 
> > OpenMap is open source software.  This is a patchlevel/bugfix release
> only - 
> > code relying on the OpenMap 4.1 API should also run with OpenMap 4.1.1
> without
> > changes.  New for this release:
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Timothy H. Keitt
> Department of Ecology and Evolution
> State University of New York at Stony Brook
> Phone: 631-632-1101, FAX: 631-632-7626
> http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/keitt/
> 
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 13:01:03 -0500
> From: Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com>
> Reply-To: warmerdam at pobox.com
> To: FreeGIS <freegis-list at intevation.de>
> Subject: [Freegis-list] US National Atlas Data
> 
> 
> Folks, 
> 
> I think the US National Atlas information is a candidate for listing on
> the freegis pages.
> 
>   http://www.nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html
> 
> The data is in the public domain as indicated by the national atlas FAQ:
> 
> "13. I've noticed the little registered trademark symbol in "The National 
> Atlas of the United States of America?." Does this mean that National
> Atlas 
> data is proprietary?
> 
> No. Nearly all information collected by the federal government is in the 
> public domain and use of data produced under this project will not be 
> restricted in any way. Both "National Atlas of the United States?" and
> "The 
> National Atlas of the United States of America? are registered trademarks 
> of the United States Department of the Interior. The USGS has been
> publishing 
> National Atlas products since 1970 and has simply taken action to
> trademark 
> this term to incorporate all new graphic and electronic products of The 
> National Atlas of the United States of America?"
> 
> The data is in SDTS, E00, Shape and TIFF formats. 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> ---------------------------------------+----------------------------------
> ----
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
> warmerdam at pobox.com
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerda
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent
> 
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Freegis-list mailing list
> Freegis-list at intevation.de
> http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
> 
> 
> End of Freegis-list Digest
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From mm at giub.uni-bonn.de  Fri Mar 23 08:22:31 2001
From: mm at giub.uni-bonn.de (Markus Mueller)
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:22:31 +0100
Subject: [Freegis-list] Shape File Reader
References: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031B89C1@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>
Message-ID: <3ABAF9B7.5F5F24C9@giub.uni-bonn.de>

Hi Shankar 

> Hi,
>     We are in need of reading the contents of ".shp" file.And we are
> using java for this.The problem is the .shp file is having a variable
> "byte order".For some record contents the byte order is "big endian"
> and for some it is "little endian".I can read the big endian types but
> not the little endian ones.I am getting wrong values that dont match
> with the file specifications.Can anybody out there help me on deciding
> which file reader class I should use in java to read all the .shp file
> contents.Thanks in advance.

We implemented a Shapefile-Reader in java which is fully functional as
part of our Simple Features project. It is openSource (LGPL) and can be
found at: http://katla.giub.uni-bonn.de/sfjava/


Cheers

Markus

-- 
Markus Mueller
Department of Geography			Tel.: +49-(0)228-733058
University of Bonn			Fax : +49-(0)228-739658
53115 Bonn				mailto:mm at giub.uni-bonn.de
Germany					http://www.giub.uni-bonn.de/gisfe/



From s3070416 at student.anu.edu.au  Sun Mar 25 13:37:34 2001
From: s3070416 at student.anu.edu.au (Brett Matson)
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 21:37:34 +1000
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
Message-ID: <MJEJJNLMIHAMFKDOBDLCMEFJCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>

Hi Everyone,

I am an undergraduate engineering student currently working
on my final year thesis at the Australian National University.
I have decided to attempt a project that involves setting up
a web-enabled GIS that will enable people to contribute their
own spatial data obtained from a GPS receiver. The aim is to
establish a user-driven effort to map the world (or at least
parts of it). The result will be free, digital thematic maps
containing geographic and temporal data on any land features
that people care to map. This may include natural landmarks,
cities or even McDonalds restaurants in your local area. The
justification for this project may be as simple as having
some fun but their may be other more significant reasons that
arise after further consideration.

Clearly a project such as this will have many issues relating
to both technology and system security. Matters such as
tagging data with the author to facilitate removing data that
is found to be non-genuine have been considered. I?m hoping
to get some opinions on how such a project would be received
by the GIS/GPS community and any advice you may have on how
it could be done.

After having done some initial research, I have decided that
the best way to set this system up would be to use the OpenMap
package with a Link Layer to display ESRI shape files. The
ShapeLib library could then be used to add GPS data to the
existing map via a CGI program. Meta-data would be stored
in PostgreSQL database.

Any questions, comments or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Brett Matson




From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu  Sun Mar 25 19:33:49 2001
From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer)
Date: 25 Mar 2001 09:33:49 -0800
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
In-Reply-To: <MJEJJNLMIHAMFKDOBDLCMEFJCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <20010325172205.5FBB322130@nopause.berkeley.edu>

Hello Brett and "Free-GIS list",

Your enthusiasm is to be appreciated so take these comments as response
not criticism. Your goal is great, but there are a huge number of
difficulties with what you are tryng to do.



I won't address the technological difficulties except to encourage you
to use a Free back end to your system. My understanding of web based GIS
is that it is by far the most advance of free software GIS efforts and
that, with a bit of work, you could actually have a whole Free gis
system which is "web based". So, take a leap into the unknown and break
out of the shadow of ESRI. :-)



There are quite a few problems which emerge when future users attempt to
assemble data from heterogenous data sources. Your end vision seems to
be to have a huge amount of data which, although perhaps occaisonally
conflicting, could be amalgamated into a decent gis data base. Most of
the problems I see with the heterogenous origin of the data set are the
problems addressed by the large METAdata efforts in GIS. You message
shows you've thought about these data issues but I would encourage you
to spell out early how to deal with this heterogenous data.


Look from the perspective of your future users comming to get data from
the system. Consider what they are able to say about the data, how they
are able to assess quality and reliability of each data set. Then
consider how they could resolve differences between data sets.

As an example, I have submitted my data set of this tiny place in
ethiopia. You have a back drop of say the Digital Chart of the World and
a quick check shows that my elevations are resonable for that part of
the world so the data is at least plausible. Now another user, has taken
a trip to the area and submits her data. The same base check shows that
the data is plausible so it's accepted. Now a user grabs the two data
sets.

Thematically:

    The data dictionaries will be different. How to decide what we both
    meant by roads. (I had four classes (major, minor, passable,
    walkable) The second user could have had a totally different
    description. Some folks are trying to come up with a standard data
    dictionary but I suspect they will fail because we don't all want
    the same information from the planet. You would have to think how to
    resolve disparate dictionaries (disparate definitions of data
    elements)


Physically

    Did we move down the roads in a similar fashion? Who moved down the
    centerline, who stayed in their lanes? How fast did we move? Or did
    one person survey and another drive?


Accuracy

    I claim to have differentially corrected all my data. How do I prove
    to the next user that my data are accuarate? You should think about
    developing some data layer that would demonstrate accuracy. For
    instance you could require some of the data submitted to be a repeat
    visit to the same location ten days apart. A good metric like this
    would be really helpful. Consider the thematic information:

You could of course punt and simply give the third user all the data and
let them slog throught it making their own decisions. This doesn't help.
You still have to figure out how to provide them with the information
they will need to make these decisions. If you don't your whole system
will just prove useless.

So you are left with imposing some fairly heavy
restrictions/requirements of data submitters for data compliance or
meta-data inclusion or left with doing a lot of resolution, filtering
work on your end. Either is practicable but you are going to have to do
something to ensure some standardization of your data. It's tough and my
personal take on this is that the data could never be well integrated
into such a system unless you started out with that in mind (i.e. we all
gathered data for the GNU atlas in GNU GPS format :-) )

I also think that the quickest way to get a decent global data set is to
force it out of the US goverment. They have some great global data sets
that they are holding on to illegally (e.g. the Digital Chart of the
World Level 1 (or 2?) ). thinking has become mostly that it's better to
force the US government to release the data it gathers into the public
domain as required by law

This page is old but relevant:
http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/NonProfitBlvd/free_world_maps/index.html

So good luck with your project and do consider some of these issues all
the way through to the end user you have in mind.

cheers,
adrian






From s3070416 at student.anu.edu.au  Mon Mar 26 04:16:21 2001
From: s3070416 at student.anu.edu.au (Brett Matson)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 12:16:21 +1000
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
In-Reply-To: <20010325172205.5FBB322130@nopause.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <EEEKLKMCJMFAHGFGCKNDKEGICAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>

Hi Adrian and everyone,

Thanks for the great feedback. At the start of this project I had some long
conversions with my thesis supervisor who raised some of the issues you
pointed out. Others points hadn't occurred to me at all. I have outlined
some of my thoughts on the points you made below. These are still just
preliminary ideas that will hopefully provoke more discussion within the
news
group.

Free Software

I will be using free, open source software exclusively throughout the
project.
I agree that the free web GIS software available is very good quality and I
would like to further the free software/spatial data effort that is now very
strong.

I have considered using ESRI shapefiles to store the data because it was
difficult finding a format that could be easily read and written to by free
software. This is why I decided that the Shapelib library, used in
conjunction
with the OpenMap package, would solve this problem. Do you know of any other
data formats or libraries that might be more desirable.

Heterogenous Data Sources

As you mentioned, this topic will require a lot of further consideration.
Metadata will play an important part in attempting to solve this problem.
Could you point me towards some of the metadata efforts you mentioned?


Disparate Dictionaries

This is a good point. It seems that the simplest (but not most elegant)
solution would be to restrict the number of classes available and allow
the users who contribute the data to decide for themselves which class
to use and then they could possibly provide additional information as
metadata if necessary.

I can't see how it would be possible to completely solve this problem
in a system where people are free to add any data they like. Perhaps
standards and guidelines could reduce the problem enough so that the
map is still worthwhile.


Physically

I guess a system where an unrestricted group of people collect data in
their own way will always suffer from these problems. I wonder if simply
attaching metadata that describes the travelling method, speed, position
on the road, etc.. would be enough to cope with this problem?

Accuracy

I like your idea for a data layer to demonstrate accuracy. Based on
the results of the accuracy test, users could have a 'score'
associated with their data providing other users with an indication
of the quality of their data. Users could then improve their score
by upgrading their technology or technique. By adding a temporal
component to each data set, it could be recorded that in 1999 Jill's
data wasn't too good but since November 2000 her data is very accurate.
Users could then vie for the honour of obtaining the highest score
or possibly have a top-ten contributors list.

I don't know how idealistic this would be but its interesting thinking
about the possibilities. Its this kind of user interaction that I hope
would create a strong culture and inspire people to participate and
have fun with it.


A concern that my supervisor and I had was how these heavy restrictions
and requirements would effect the culture of the user group. If
people feel that there is a too strict regime placed on them,
they may be less inclined to participate. An important aspect of this
project is allowing people to use it freely, but as you pointed out, the
map will be worthless if these issues can't be solved in a sensible way.

Thanks again for your help, Adrian. If you have any more ideas I'll be
glad to hear them. I would also like to hear the advice or opinions of
anyone else interested in GIS or GPS. Even an expression of interest in
using the system when it gets up and running would be a good motivator.

A website for the project should be up in the next couple of weeks which
will provide more details.

Cheers

Brett



-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Custer [mailto:acuster at nature.berkeley.edu]
Sent: Monday, 26 March 2001 3:34 AM
To: Brett home
Cc: freegis-list at intevation.de
Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal


Hello Brett and "Free-GIS list",

Your enthusiasm is to be appreciated so take these comments as response
not criticism. Your goal is great, but there are a huge number of
difficulties with what you are tryng to do.



I won't address the technological difficulties except to encourage you
to use a Free back end to your system. My understanding of web based GIS
is that it is by far the most advance of free software GIS efforts and
that, with a bit of work, you could actually have a whole Free gis
system which is "web based". So, take a leap into the unknown and break
out of the shadow of ESRI. :-)



There are quite a few problems which emerge when future users attempt to
assemble data from heterogenous data sources. Your end vision seems to
be to have a huge amount of data which, although perhaps occaisonally
conflicting, could be amalgamated into a decent gis data base. Most of
the problems I see with the heterogenous origin of the data set are the
problems addressed by the large METAdata efforts in GIS. You message
shows you've thought about these data issues but I would encourage you
to spell out early how to deal with this heterogenous data.


Look from the perspective of your future users comming to get data from
the system. Consider what they are able to say about the data, how they
are able to assess quality and reliability of each data set. Then
consider how they could resolve differences between data sets.

As an example, I have submitted my data set of this tiny place in
ethiopia. You have a back drop of say the Digital Chart of the World and
a quick check shows that my elevations are resonable for that part of
the world so the data is at least plausible. Now another user, has taken
a trip to the area and submits her data. The same base check shows that
the data is plausible so it's accepted. Now a user grabs the two data
sets.

Thematically:

    The data dictionaries will be different. How to decide what we both
    meant by roads. (I had four classes (major, minor, passable,
    walkable) The second user could have had a totally different
    description. Some folks are trying to come up with a standard data
    dictionary but I suspect they will fail because we don't all want
    the same information from the planet. You would have to think how to
    resolve disparate dictionaries (disparate definitions of data
    elements)


Physically

    Did we move down the roads in a similar fashion? Who moved down the
    centerline, who stayed in their lanes? How fast did we move? Or did
    one person survey and another drive?


Accuracy

    I claim to have differentially corrected all my data. How do I prove
    to the next user that my data are accuarate? You should think about
    developing some data layer that would demonstrate accuracy. For
    instance you could require some of the data submitted to be a repeat
    visit to the same location ten days apart. A good metric like this
    would be really helpful. Consider the thematic information:

You could of course punt and simply give the third user all the data and
let them slog throught it making their own decisions. This doesn't help.
You still have to figure out how to provide them with the information
they will need to make these decisions. If you don't your whole system
will just prove useless.

So you are left with imposing some fairly heavy
restrictions/requirements of data submitters for data compliance or
meta-data inclusion or left with doing a lot of resolution, filtering
work on your end. Either is practicable but you are going to have to do
something to ensure some standardization of your data. It's tough and my
personal take on this is that the data could never be well integrated
into such a system unless you started out with that in mind (i.e. we all
gathered data for the GNU atlas in GNU GPS format :-) )

I also think that the quickest way to get a decent global data set is to
force it out of the US goverment. They have some great global data sets
that they are holding on to illegally (e.g. the Digital Chart of the
World Level 1 (or 2?) ). thinking has become mostly that it's better to
force the US government to release the data it gathers into the public
domain as required by law

This page is old but relevant:
http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/NonProfitBlvd/free_world_maps/index.html

So good luck with your project and do consider some of these issues all
the way through to the end user you have in mind.

cheers,
adrian







From jgreid at uow.edu.au  Mon Mar 26 10:07:08 2001
From: jgreid at uow.edu.au (John Reid)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 18:07:08 +1000
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
References: <EEEKLKMCJMFAHGFGCKNDKEGICAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3ABEF8AC.C737AB0B@uow.edu.au>

Hi Brett, listers,

Apologies for the brevity.  I'm looking at some similar issues at the moment.

Brett Matson wrote:

> Hi Adrian and everyone,
>
> Thanks for the great feedback. At the start of this project I had some long
> conversions with my thesis supervisor who raised some of the issues you
> pointed out. Others points hadn't occurred to me at all. I have outlined
> some of my thoughts on the points you made below. These are still just
> preliminary ideas that will hopefully provoke more discussion within the
> news
> group.
>
> Free Software
>
> I will be using free, open source software exclusively throughout the
> project.
> I agree that the free web GIS software available is very good quality and I
> would like to further the free software/spatial data effort that is now very
> strong.

Ditto

> I have considered using ESRI shapefiles to store the data because it was
> difficult finding a format that could be easily read and written to by free
> software. This is why I decided that the Shapelib library, used in
> conjunction
> with the OpenMap package, would solve this problem. Do you know of any other
> data formats or libraries that might be more desirable.

SDTS?
http://www.diffuse.org/gis.html#SDTS
http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/index.html
http://www.anzlic.org.au/archive/sdts_sum.htm

I have just glanced at it (currently sitting on the coffee table along with a
year's worth of other reading ;-), however I am not sure as to its suitability
for data storage, as AFAIK it is designed as a transfer standard.  There are C++
libraries freely available from the usgs site.

> Heterogenous Data Sources
>
> As you mentioned, this topic will require a lot of further consideration.
> Metadata will play an important part in attempting to solve this problem.
> Could you point me towards some of the metadata efforts you mentioned?

http://www.anzlic.org.au/asdi/metaelem.htm
Also check out the ISO TC/211 web site for general info.  Unfortunately most of
the info is restricted access.

> Disparate Dictionaries
>
> This is a good point. It seems that the simplest (but not most elegant)
> solution would be to restrict the number of classes available and allow
> the users who contribute the data to decide for themselves which class
> to use and then they could possibly provide additional information as
> metadata if necessary.
>
> I can't see how it would be possible to completely solve this problem
> in a system where people are free to add any data they like. Perhaps
> standards and guidelines could reduce the problem enough so that the
> map is still worthwhile.
>
> Physically
>
> I guess a system where an unrestricted group of people collect data in
> their own way will always suffer from these problems. I wonder if simply
> attaching metadata that describes the travelling method, speed, position
> on the road, etc.. would be enough to cope with this problem?
>
> Accuracy
>
> I like your idea for a data layer to demonstrate accuracy. Based on
> the results of the accuracy test, users could have a 'score'
> associated with their data providing other users with an indication
> of the quality of their data. Users could then improve their score
> by upgrading their technology or technique. By adding a temporal
> component to each data set, it could be recorded that in 1999 Jill's
> data wasn't too good but since November 2000 her data is very accurate.
> Users could then vie for the honour of obtaining the highest score
> or possibly have a top-ten contributors list.
>
> I don't know how idealistic this would be but its interesting thinking
> about the possibilities. Its this kind of user interaction that I hope
> would create a strong culture and inspire people to participate and
> have fun with it.
>
> A concern that my supervisor and I had was how these heavy restrictions
> and requirements would effect the culture of the user group. If
> people feel that there is a too strict regime placed on them,
> they may be less inclined to participate. An important aspect of this
> project is allowing people to use it freely, but as you pointed out, the
> map will be worthless if these issues can't be solved in a sensible way.
>
> Thanks again for your help, Adrian. If you have any more ideas I'll be
> glad to hear them. I would also like to hear the advice or opinions of
> anyone else interested in GIS or GPS. Even an expression of interest in
> using the system when it gets up and running would be a good motivator.

Brett, I would be interested in more detail about your plans - especially along
the metadata lines ;-)  Maybe a co-operative approach?  Maybe we could even get
AUSLIG interested in the open source approach :-)

> A website for the project should be up in the next couple of weeks which
> will provide more details.

Cool!

> Cheers
>
> Brett
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adrian Custer [mailto:acuster at nature.berkeley.edu]
> Sent: Monday, 26 March 2001 3:34 AM
> To: Brett home
> Cc: freegis-list at intevation.de
> Subject: Re: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
>
> Hello Brett and "Free-GIS list",
>
> Your enthusiasm is to be appreciated so take these comments as response
> not criticism. Your goal is great, but there are a huge number of
> difficulties with what you are tryng to do.
>
> I won't address the technological difficulties except to encourage you
> to use a Free back end to your system. My understanding of web based GIS
> is that it is by far the most advance of free software GIS efforts and
> that, with a bit of work, you could actually have a whole Free gis
> system which is "web based". So, take a leap into the unknown and break
> out of the shadow of ESRI. :-)
>
> There are quite a few problems which emerge when future users attempt to
> assemble data from heterogenous data sources. Your end vision seems to
> be to have a huge amount of data which, although perhaps occaisonally
> conflicting, could be amalgamated into a decent gis data base. Most of
> the problems I see with the heterogenous origin of the data set are the
> problems addressed by the large METAdata efforts in GIS. You message
> shows you've thought about these data issues but I would encourage you
> to spell out early how to deal with this heterogenous data.
>
> Look from the perspective of your future users comming to get data from
> the system. Consider what they are able to say about the data, how they
> are able to assess quality and reliability of each data set. Then
> consider how they could resolve differences between data sets.
>
> As an example, I have submitted my data set of this tiny place in
> ethiopia. You have a back drop of say the Digital Chart of the World and
> a quick check shows that my elevations are resonable for that part of
> the world so the data is at least plausible. Now another user, has taken
> a trip to the area and submits her data. The same base check shows that
> the data is plausible so it's accepted. Now a user grabs the two data
> sets.
>
> Thematically:
>
>     The data dictionaries will be different. How to decide what we both
>     meant by roads. (I had four classes (major, minor, passable,
>     walkable) The second user could have had a totally different
>     description. Some folks are trying to come up with a standard data
>     dictionary but I suspect they will fail because we don't all want
>     the same information from the planet. You would have to think how to
>     resolve disparate dictionaries (disparate definitions of data
>     elements)
>
> Physically
>
>     Did we move down the roads in a similar fashion? Who moved down the
>     centerline, who stayed in their lanes? How fast did we move? Or did
>     one person survey and another drive?
>
> Accuracy
>
>     I claim to have differentially corrected all my data. How do I prove
>     to the next user that my data are accuarate? You should think about
>     developing some data layer that would demonstrate accuracy. For
>     instance you could require some of the data submitted to be a repeat
>     visit to the same location ten days apart. A good metric like this
>     would be really helpful. Consider the thematic information:
>
> You could of course punt and simply give the third user all the data and
> let them slog throught it making their own decisions. This doesn't help.
> You still have to figure out how to provide them with the information
> they will need to make these decisions. If you don't your whole system
> will just prove useless.
>
> So you are left with imposing some fairly heavy
> restrictions/requirements of data submitters for data compliance or
> meta-data inclusion or left with doing a lot of resolution, filtering
> work on your end. Either is practicable but you are going to have to do
> something to ensure some standardization of your data. It's tough and my
> personal take on this is that the data could never be well integrated
> into such a system unless you started out with that in mind (i.e. we all
> gathered data for the GNU atlas in GNU GPS format :-) )
>
> I also think that the quickest way to get a decent global data set is to
> force it out of the US goverment. They have some great global data sets
> that they are holding on to illegally (e.g. the Digital Chart of the
> World Level 1 (or 2?) ). thinking has become mostly that it's better to
> force the US government to release the data it gathers into the public
> domain as required by law
>
> This page is old but relevant:
> http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/NonProfitBlvd/free_world_maps/index.html
>
> So good luck with your project and do consider some of these issues all
> the way through to the end user you have in mind.
>
> cheers,
> adrian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freegis-list mailing list
> Freegis-list at intevation.de
> http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list

cheers,
JOhn
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
john reid                                  e-mail john_reid at uow.edu.au
technical officer                                room G02, building 41
school of geosciences                           phone +61 02 4221 3963
university of wollongong                          fax +61 02 4221 4250

uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be
seen.  more questions!
                                                       -mentat zensufi

apply standard disclaimers as desired...
----------------------------------------------------------------------





From jgreid at uow.edu.au  Mon Mar 26 10:11:43 2001
From: jgreid at uow.edu.au (John Reid)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 18:11:43 +1000
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
References: <EEEKLKMCJMFAHGFGCKNDKEGICAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au> <3ABEF8AC.C737AB0B@uow.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3ABEF9BF.65749950@uow.edu.au>

Oops, forgot the link

John Reid wrote:

> Also check out the ISO TC/211 web site for general info.  Unfortunately most of
> the info is restricted access.

http://www.statkart.no/isotc211/

----------------------------------------------------------------------
john reid                                  e-mail john_reid at uow.edu.au
technical officer                                room G02, building 41
school of geosciences                           phone +61 02 4221 3963
university of wollongong                          fax +61 02 4221 4250

uproot your questions from their ground and the dangling roots will be
seen.  more questions!
                                                       -mentat zensufi

apply standard disclaimers as desired...
----------------------------------------------------------------------





From smaffulli at inwind.it  Mon Mar 26 10:33:28 2001
From: smaffulli at inwind.it (Stefano Maffulli)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:33:28 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
In-Reply-To: <EEEKLKMCJMFAHGFGCKNDKEGICAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <NEBBIAALPMAAPJAHIGFPAEPKCEAA.smaffulli@inwind.it>

Hello Brett, hello everybody

I suggest you to give a look at this web site as it implements partially
(as long as I understant) what you may want to setup. I know most of the
people involved in that project (i will see them next thursday, btw) and
they are very open to suggestions and may help you.
http://opengis.jrc.it/

Actually I am happy as your idea follows one that I had in mind for a long
time, but never had the time to focus on. Here at JRC and at the GIS_LAB at
the University of Florence, I had long discussions over how to practically
implement the idea. I had to give up, taken by daily work and also since
lots of technology 2 years ago did not exist or was not as mature as today.
I am really glad the issue is coming up again, so please, if you need any
help feel free to contact me personally

Good luck
Stefano Maffulli

PS:
[snip]
>  This page is old but relevant:
>
http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/NonProfitBlvd/free_world_maps/index.html

How old is this page? How far away did the project go (are there any
dataset published, aside from the US time zones)?

--
Stefano Maffulli aka _Reed                  | Milano Linux User Group
http://www.zoomata.com a close-up on italy  | http://www.milug.org
tel: +39 347 1493.733                       | http://HomePage.Coming




From shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com  Mon Mar 26 13:36:10 2001
From: shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com (Shankar Narayanan.K , STC Chennai)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 17:06:10 +0530
Subject: [Freegis-list] RE: Freegis-list digest, Vol 1 #134 - 1 msg
Message-ID: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031B9554@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>

Dear all,
            Can somebody explain me the concept of "Dynamic Segmentation".If
a user wants to see the pavement condition or the traffic flow at a
particular road section,then he should create a seperate "Event Table"? This
event table will be derived from the already existing database tables? If
yes,then each record in that event table will have an associated theme for
display purpose? In other words,do we need to create a seperate shape
file(.shp,.dbf,.shx) for dynamically segemented data. Please clarify this.Is
there a free tool (like mapserver) that provides dynamic segmentation.I want
to see a demo of the DS module.Will be grateful if I get the URL fr this.

Regards,
Shankar

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	freegis-list-request at intevation.de
> [SMTP:freegis-list-request at intevation.de]
> Sent:	Monday, March 26, 2001 11:01 AM
> To:	freegis-list at intevation.de
> Subject:	Freegis-list digest, Vol 1 #134 - 1 msg
> 
> Send Freegis-list mailing list submissions to
> 	freegis-list at intevation.de
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
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> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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> 
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> than "Re: Contents of Freegis-list digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. RE: Cooperative mapping project proposal (Stefano Maffulli)
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 1
> From: "Stefano Maffulli" <smaffulli at inwind.it>
> To: "FreeGIS List" <freegis-list at intevation.de>
> Subject: RE: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
> Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:33:28 +0200
> 
> Hello Brett, hello everybody
> 
> I suggest you to give a look at this web site as it implements partially
> (as long as I understant) what you may want to setup. I know most of the
> people involved in that project (i will see them next thursday, btw) and
> they are very open to suggestions and may help you.
> http://opengis.jrc.it/
> 
> Actually I am happy as your idea follows one that I had in mind for a long
> time, but never had the time to focus on. Here at JRC and at the GIS_LAB
> at
> the University of Florence, I had long discussions over how to practically
> implement the idea. I had to give up, taken by daily work and also since
> lots of technology 2 years ago did not exist or was not as mature as
> today.
> I am really glad the issue is coming up again, so please, if you need any
> help feel free to contact me personally
> 
> Good luck
> Stefano Maffulli
> 
> PS:
> [snip]
> >  This page is old but relevant:
> >
> http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/NonProfitBlvd/free_world_maps/index.html
> 
> How old is this page? How far away did the project go (are there any
> dataset published, aside from the US time zones)?
> 
> --
> Stefano Maffulli aka _Reed                  | Milano Linux User Group
> http://www.zoomata.com a close-up on italy  | http://www.milug.org
> tel: +39 347 1493.733                       | http://HomePage.Coming
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Freegis-list mailing list
> Freegis-list at intevation.de
> http://intevation.de/mailman/listinfo/freegis-list
> 
> 
> End of Freegis-list Digest
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From frank.koormann at intevation.de  Mon Mar 26 14:02:52 2001
From: frank.koormann at intevation.de (Frank Koormann)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 14:02:52 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] RE: Freegis-list digest, Vol 1 #134 - 1 msg
In-Reply-To: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031B9554@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>; from shankar_narayanank@msdc.hcltech.com on Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 05:06:10PM +0530
References: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031B9554@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>
Message-ID: <20010326140251.A1679@abnoba.intevation.de>

Dear Shankar,

* Shankar Narayanan.K , STC Chennai (shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com) [010326 13:30]:
> 
>    Dear all,
>                Can somebody explain me the concept of "Dynamic
>    Segmentation".If a user wants to see the pavement condition or the
>    traffic flow at a particular road section,then he should create a
>    seperate "Event Table"? This event table will be derived from the
>    already existing database tables? If yes,then each record in that
>    event table will have an associated theme for display purpose? In
>    other words,do we need to create a seperate shape file(.shp,.dbf,.shx)
>    for dynamically segemented data. Please clarify this.

Although AFAIK this is a ESRI specific feature I will try to explain
in brief: DynSeg allows you to display data apart from the general
attribute concept. In your example you first have to define a
measurement system on the road net (a line theme). Having your data
prepared you would be able to display further information with reference
to the measurement system (like accidents (points) located by 
kilometers/miles or pavement condition (from km to km)) and therewith
independent from the underlying line segmentation. Thus this data 
is indepentend from a specific theme.

>    Is there a free
>    tool (like mapserver) that provides dynamic segmentation.I want to see
>    a demo of the DS module.Will be grateful if I get the URL fr this.
>    

Since the concept of DynSeg is an ESRI specific approach, i don't think
there is an application in the focus of this list supporting the feature.
At least I don't know any one.

Regards,

    Frank

-- 
Frank Koormann                              http://intevation.net/~frank/
 Professional Service around Free Software         http://intevation.net/
 FreeGIS Project                                   http://freegis.org/



From ctang at teloptica.com  Mon Mar 26 16:28:24 2001
From: ctang at teloptica.com (Chinh Tang)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 08:28:24 -0600
Subject: [Freegis-list] Re: Cooperative mapping project proposal
References: <MJEJJNLMIHAMFKDOBDLCMEFJCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3ABF5208.443B9F77@teloptica.com>

have you looked at the U.S. 1990 Census map? check it out, you might want to use
some of their ideas.
http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapsurfer?lat=32.38991&lon=-101.26116&wid=11.520&ht=4.160&iht=359&iwd=422&&&&&on=CITIES&on=censusb&tlevel=-&tvar=-&tmeth=i&mlat=&mlon=&msym=bigdot&mlabel=&murl=&conf=mapnew.con





Brett Matson wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am an undergraduate engineering student currently working
> on my final year thesis at the Australian National University.
> I have decided to attempt a project that involves setting up
> a web-enabled GIS that will enable people to contribute their
> own spatial data obtained from a GPS receiver. The aim is to
> establish a user-driven effort to map the world (or at least
> parts of it). The result will be free, digital thematic maps
> containing geographic and temporal data on any land features
> that people care to map. This may include natural landmarks,
> cities or even McDonalds restaurants in your local area. The
> justification for this project may be as simple as having
> some fun but their may be other more significant reasons that
> arise after further consideration.
>
> Clearly a project such as this will have many issues relating
> to both technology and system security. Matters such as
> tagging data with the author to facilitate removing data that
> is found to be non-genuine have been considered. I?m hoping
> to get some opinions on how such a project would be received
> by the GIS/GPS community and any advice you may have on how
> it could be done.
>
> After having done some initial research, I have decided that
> the best way to set this system up would be to use the OpenMap
> package with a Link Layer to display ESRI shape files. The
> ShapeLib library could then be used to add GPS data to the
> existing map via a CGI program. Meta-data would be stored
> in PostgreSQL database.
>
> Any questions, comments or advice would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Brett Matson
>
> --
> [To unsubscribe to this list send an email to "majdart at bbn.com"
> with the following text in the BODY of the message "unsubscribe openmap-users"]




From jan at intevation.de  Mon Mar 26 19:31:51 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:31:51 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] US National Atlas Data
In-Reply-To: <3AB8EC5F.AF546242@pobox.com>; from warmerdam@pobox.com on Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 01:01:03PM -0500
References: <3AB8EC5F.AF546242@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20010326193151.C4070@abnoba.intevation.de>

On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 01:01:03PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> I think the US National Atlas information is a candidate for listing on
> the freegis pages.
> 
>   http://www.nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html

thanks for the hint.
I have just added the link to FreeGIS.

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From jan at intevation.de  Mon Mar 26 19:48:01 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:48:01 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] Re: sdts++ missing from freegis.org
In-Reply-To: <200103211822.f2LIMT220396@laputa.lychnobite.org>; from mcoletti@lychnobite.org on Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 01:22:27PM -0500
References: <200103211822.f2LIMT220396@laputa.lychnobite.org>
Message-ID: <20010326194801.D4070@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hi Mark,

On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 01:22:27PM -0500, Mark Coletti wrote:
> I just blundered across your web site, freegis.org, which is probably
> the best collection of GIS resource pointers I've encountered in a
> long while.  However, I was surprised to discover that sdts++ was not
> listed.  sdts++ is a free C++ library for reading and writing SDTS
> datasets.  Its home page is: http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/sdtsxx/
> Can you please add an entry for it on your web site?

Sorry for this later answer - was on the CeBIT fair in Hannover for
a couple of days.

SDTS++ looks quite interesting and definitely was missing on the
FreeGIS page. I have added it today.

Thanks for your hint!

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From s3070416 at student.anu.edu.au  Tue Mar 27 00:35:59 2001
From: s3070416 at student.anu.edu.au (Brett Matson)
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:35:59 +1000
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
Message-ID: <HGEPIJACEKEJKAFFOKOOGEOGCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>

Hi Felipe and everyone,
	
>	I strongly support your initiative. Leaving the initiative 
>to the user, such a system has chances to be as successfully as 
>another initiatives that share the same principle (think about 
>the Free Software/Open Source movement).

I'm glad to hear such enthusiasm for the project. Thanks for 
your thoughts on how it should be done.

>To build a such infrastructure that enable and incentive the 
>participation of a user community, I think there are 3 main 
>issues to be addressed: (1) data structure, (2) metadata, and 
>(3) user interaction.

>How you will receive, store and send the data: you have choosed
>to use the shape file format, which is a good choice, since it 
>is well documented and there is a very good Free library available 
>to deal with it, as you stated before. But you could also use a 
>traditional RDBMS to store it, in a OpenGIS Simple Feature 
>specification fashion, and send and receive data in GML2, for 
>example. And also receive classical GPS tracklogs in NMEA format.
>Just another possibilities.

I have spent quite a long time trying to work out how this should be
done and I'm still looking at options. You mentioned the GML2 format
for GIS data. I would like to use this in order to comply with OpenGIS
standards but I'm not aware of any free web-GIS that can support it,
or any conversion tool that can read/write it.

The format of GPS track logs is also something I've been meaning to 
learn more about. Do you know if NMEA is a format used by the majority 
of GPS receivers? If not, are there many GPS log formats that make up the
majority of the market share?

>I think the main problems that you will have to deal with are about 
>metadata. Digital Geospatial Metadata is on the top of my interest 
>subject list. Currently I am reading some standard specifications 
>(from US FGDC, ISO, Auzlig and Dublin Core), but the long-term 
>objective is to build a generic Free MDBMS - Metadata-base Managment 
>System (unfortunetely, it advances as time allows). Maybe we can 
>share some ideas and work, making the project of each one better 
>and avoiding duplicated effort. Just a thought. 

Sharing some ideas and work on this subject would be good. I'll have to
do a lot of reading on the subject before I'm up to speed with it though.
A free MDBS sounds like a great idea. 

>And about the 3rd issue, I think a set of guidelines would be enough 
>to drive the users efforts. And, when in doubt (about category 
>classification, and data assurence, for example), I would leave the 
>decision to the user. Maybe a rating mechanism of bases by users 
>would be a good reasonable solution.

I think you might be right here. I guess what I'll be doing initially is 
trying to find out what does work and improving the process over time.

>I also recommend you to take a look in some papers about ontologies in 
>semantic interoperability for GISs. Frederico Fonseca, from University 
>of Maine (www.spatial.maine.edu/~fred) has some papers about it.

Thanks. I'll have a good look at some of those papers.

>Best regards,
>Felipe Nievinski.

Thanks again for your advice and support.

Brett





From jan at intevation.de  Tue Mar 27 10:51:14 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:51:14 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] Shape File Reader
In-Reply-To: <3ABAF9B7.5F5F24C9@giub.uni-bonn.de>; from mm@giub.uni-bonn.de on Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 08:22:31AM +0100
References: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031B89C1@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com> <3ABAF9B7.5F5F24C9@giub.uni-bonn.de>
Message-ID: <20010327105114.A17769@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hi Markus,

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 08:22:31AM +0100, Markus Mueller wrote:
> We implemented a Shapefile-Reader in java which is fully functional as
> part of our Simple Features project. It is openSource (LGPL) and can be
> found at: http://katla.giub.uni-bonn.de/sfjava/

That is interesting. I have added sfcorba2java to FreeGIS.
Thanks for the info.

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From jan at intevation.de  Tue Mar 27 11:36:59 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 11:36:59 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
In-Reply-To: <MJEJJNLMIHAMFKDOBDLCMEFJCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>; from s3070416@student.anu.edu.au on Sun, Mar 25, 2001 at 09:37:34PM +1000
References: <MJEJJNLMIHAMFKDOBDLCMEFJCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <20010327113659.B17769@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hello Brett,

On Sun, Mar 25, 2001 at 09:37:34PM +1000, Brett Matson wrote:
> Any questions, comments or advice would be greatly appreciated.

first of all: I am happy to see that many people around the
globe like the idea of free geographic data collection.

A project like the one you proposed brews in my brain since over
two years now. And appearantly it brews in many other brains
as well :-)

Some of my thought on such a project:

- the availability of Free GI Data is different for some
	areas in the world. While for the US there plenty
	of data released as public domain we have a desolate
	situation in Europe. Thus European people can
	easier be convinced to contribute to a free data project
	just because they might be (later) able to have at least
	some free GI data of Europe (better than VMAPL0).
	To my mind you can't motivate US people to collect data
	which already are available in the public domain.
	Conclusion: think about where is the aimed source
	of motivatable contributors.

- sampling any point in the world is a too diffuse mission.
	It would be better to start with some most interesting
	(ie. useful) datasets. 
	Personally I think that river networks would be a quite
	nice theme to start with.  This type of data is scalable,
	not too comprehensive and allows interesting use in science.
	Conclusion: think about what people can be motivated to
	collect. What do they need? Perhaps you should involve
	people to discuss needs in order to find some ranking.

- starting with an empty layer will create lots of discussion
	and perhaps confusion within the group of first
	contributors. While this is certainly good, a profound
	base data set would help to increase motivation from the
	very first beginning.
	Conclusion: do you have some money available to collect
	a datasset to start with? If you can find a small dataset
	to sample which will directly be used for some project
	that would be a perfect PR hook.

thats all for now.

Please keep posting your progress, thought etc. - I am very
interested in your project!

BTW, there was a project (currently seems to be abandoned)
that had the similar goal, FREEMAP:
http://www.freemap.nett.org/english/index.html

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com  Tue Mar 27 13:32:29 2001
From: shankar_narayanank at msdc.hcltech.com (Shankar Narayanan.K , STC Chennai)
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 17:02:29 +0530
Subject: [Freegis-list] RE: Freegis-list digest, Vol 1 #135 - 8 msgs
Message-ID: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031E8CE0@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>

Dear all,
		This is in continuation with the query I posted on dynamic
segmentaion earlier.I am not using arcview/arcinfo etc right now.(We will
get it soon)So I may not be able to understand 'coverages' and lingo
specific to that product.Can you pls explain this in general terms.I am
putting whatever I've understood about DS and pls clarify it.

1) Say I am having a theme named roads (obviously including .shp,.dbf,.shx.)

2) I want to view the roughness of the road throughout it's length (which is
not a field in the .dbf table)

3) Now,I am creating an event table with fields Route_id,From,To,
attribute(with values good,bad,fair etc..).

Note: Is route_id  the foreign key that connects my roads.dbf and the event
table?

5) How will the map viewer software recognises that the event table values
belong to roads.dbf?

6) How can it plot the segments(line) in the map over the "roads" theme?

7) How the "FROM" & "TO" values are properly recognised and placed in the
map?Because from what I've understood it is the .shp file that holds the
coordinate info and will be used for plotting of lines in the map.Here are
we creating a .shp for every record in the event table?

Regards,
Shankar

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From jan at intevation.de  Tue Mar 27 13:49:55 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:49:55 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] RE: Freegis-list digest, Vol 1 #135 - 8 msgs
In-Reply-To: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031E8CE0@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>; from shankar_narayanank@msdc.hcltech.com on Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 05:02:29PM +0530
References: <21FCEFDE42DFD211A1A10007250603B2031E8CE0@pluto.msdc.hcltech.com>
Message-ID: <20010327134955.A18770@abnoba.intevation.de>

Dear Shankar,

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 05:02:29PM +0530, Shankar Narayanan.K , STC Chennai wrote:
> 		This is in continuation with the query I posted on dynamic
> segmentaion earlier.I am not using arcview/arcinfo etc right now.(We will
> get it soon)So I may not be able to understand 'coverages' and lingo
> specific to that product.Can you pls explain this in general terms.I am
> putting whatever I've understood about DS and pls clarify it.

a far better place for the questions than the FreeGIS mailing list 
is e.g. the newsgroup comp.infosystems.gis. There, general issues
of GIS are discussed.

FreeGIS focuses more on Free GIS Software and Free GI data in general.
Of course, listeners are good experts and are able to answer all of
the questions in detail. But it would be nice to have the results
in the archives of comp.infosystems.gis (where people expect such discussions)
than in the archives of FreeGIS Mailing List.

However, I am pretty sure that information on dynamic segmentation 
is also available on several web pages. Just search for the right words in google.com
- I can see many interesting hits.

Cheers

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From acuster at nature.berkeley.edu  Thu Mar 29 21:48:36 2001
From: acuster at nature.berkeley.edu (Adrian Custer)
Date: 29 Mar 2001 11:48:36 -0800
Subject: [Freegis-list] Some hard earned free data...
Message-ID: <985895317.608.2.camel@tsetse.lab-net>

Hey everyone,

Sorry if this has already made it to you through other channels. It's
hit me a few times already.

After our discussion on a GPS depository, I starteg looking again at
using the US Freedom of Information Act to get access to VMAP level1
from the government. (it turns out parts of it are available and the
data is not terribly good.) There was a web site trying to get access to
this data posted in 1999. It turns out this site was posted by a guy
called Ian Thomas.

Ian Thomas, is the scientist at the United STates Geological Survey who
recently lost his job for posting some maps of the calving areas of a
heard of caribou in Alaska/Canada! This is sensitive information now
because the US ?president? wants to open up a wildlife refuge for oli
drilling.

Anyhow his site is at http://www.maptricks.com Since it's political
data, that's being threatened, I would hope that we could link to it off
the web site. I realize that this offers potential to have tons of links
to tiny datasets but part of Freedom is the risk of it being taken away,
so it might be useful to have links to sensitve data.

cheers,
adrian




From jan at intevation.de  Fri Mar 30 10:15:37 2001
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:15:37 +0200
Subject: [Freegis-list] OGDI Licensing Concerns
In-Reply-To: <3AAC044B.E4ABC09D@pobox.com>; from warmerdam@pobox.com on Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 06:03:39PM -0500
References: <3A9ACEC9.2E4F8324@pobox.com> <20010309122006.A10147@abnoba.intevation.de> <3AAC044B.E4ABC09D@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <20010330101537.B4568@abnoba.intevation.de>

Hi all,

On Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 06:03:39PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> I have reviewed the OGDI code, and was successful in removed a number of
> files in the include/win32 directory.  While they may have once been used
> for some purpose, I find they aren't actually used anymore, even on Windows.
> I have updated the LICENSE file to reflect two licenses that are no longer
> issues (including the heapagent one), and issued an OGDI 3.1alpha3 release
> without the license problems.
> 
> I have skimmed the other licenses, and I don't think there are any other
> real problems.  If there is please let me know and I will do what I can to
> clean them up.  It is the 3i's intention for OGDI to meet the OSD. 

thanks Frank!
I got answer from FSF that even the Sun RPC license is regarded GPL compatible
(which I was not 100% sure of):

> /* @(#)auth.h 2.3 88/08/07 4.0 RPCSRC; from 1.17 88/02/08 SMI */
> /*
>  * Sun RPC is a product of Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is provided for
>  * unrestricted use provided that this legend is included on all tape
>  * media and as a part of the software program in whole or part.  Users
>  * may copy or modify Sun RPC without charge, but are not authorized   
>  * to license or distribute it to anyone else except as part of a product or
>  * program developed by the user.
> 
> This license is GPL compatible, once you put it the RPC source as part of
> a program.  We use an RPC under a similar license as part of glibc, for  
> example.

I added OGDI to FreeGIS today. It is Free Software as in "free speech".
GIS network application programmes should have a look at it.
Other interested people as well, perhaps you will gain some interesting
ideas who to use or incorporate OGDI :-)

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/



From dietrick at bbn.com  Fri Mar 30 17:24:07 2001
From: dietrick at bbn.com (Don Dietrick)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:24:07 -0500
Subject: [Freegis-list] Re: Cooperative mapping project proposal
References: <MJEJJNLMIHAMFKDOBDLCMEFJCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <3AC4A517.CED76274@bbn.com>

Hi Brett,

Sounds like a great project.

I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be making modifications
to the OpenMap LinkLayer so that it will be able to use the Link
Protocol a little differently than the html document specifies in order
to allow the layer to receive graphics and then transmit them to the
server.  This might be of interest to you with this project.

Currently, the Link Protocol breaks any transmission up into sections
that can be transmitted in any order.  Although the protocol doesn't
limit when sections can be transmitted, the document suggests that
certain sections are 'query' oriented, and that other sections are
'responses' to those queries.  I'm planning on changing the language in
the document to lesson this tone - but no changes to the protocol will
be needed.

The change to the LinkLayer will involve sending a Graphics Response
section, which is a Graphics List, without the server asking for it. 
This will allow the LinkLayer to receive graphics from the drawing tool
being developed for OpenMap, and then transmit those graphics to the
server.

Just wanted to let you know what's coming.  I wan't sure how this might
affect your architecture for the project.

Cheers,

Don

Brett Matson wrote:
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I am an undergraduate engineering student currently working
> on my final year thesis at the Australian National University.
> I have decided to attempt a project that involves setting up
> a web-enabled GIS that will enable people to contribute their
> own spatial data obtained from a GPS receiver. The aim is to
> establish a user-driven effort to map the world (or at least
> parts of it). The result will be free, digital thematic maps
> containing geographic and temporal data on any land features
> that people care to map. This may include natural landmarks,
> cities or even McDonalds restaurants in your local area. The
> justification for this project may be as simple as having
> some fun but their may be other more significant reasons that
> arise after further consideration.
> 
> Clearly a project such as this will have many issues relating
> to both technology and system security. Matters such as
> tagging data with the author to facilitate removing data that
> is found to be non-genuine have been considered. I?m hoping
> to get some opinions on how such a project would be received
> by the GIS/GPS community and any advice you may have on how
> it could be done.
> 
> After having done some initial research, I have decided that
> the best way to set this system up would be to use the OpenMap
> package with a Link Layer to display ESRI shape files. The
> ShapeLib library could then be used to add GPS data to the
> existing map via a CGI program. Meta-data would be stored
> in PostgreSQL database.
> 
> Any questions, comments or advice would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Brett Matson
> 
> --
> [To unsubscribe to this list send an email to "majdart at bbn.com"
> with the following text in the BODY of the message "unsubscribe openmap-users"]



From j5ss at yahoo.com  Fri Mar 30 17:54:52 2001
From: j5ss at yahoo.com (j5ss@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 08:54:52 -0700
Subject: [Freegis-list] Stealth Mass Mailer, 10 Million Email Addresses & More..                         4726
Message-ID: <B0000267878@dns1.mspr.co.jp>

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From fnievinski at cpovo.net  Fri Mar 30 23:00:23 2001
From: fnievinski at cpovo.net (Felipe G. Nievinski)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 18:00:23 -0300
Subject: [Freegis-list] HDF
Message-ID: <025301c0b95c$70ef3ab0$1800000a@felipe>

Another hint:

The NCSA HDF Home Page
Information, Support, and Software from the Hierarchical Data Format (HDF)
Group of NCSA
http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/





From fnievinski at cpovo.net  Sat Mar 31 01:43:05 2001
From: fnievinski at cpovo.net (Felipe G. Nievinski)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 20:43:05 -0300
Subject: [Freegis-list] Cooperative mapping project proposal
References: <HGEPIJACEKEJKAFFOKOOGEOGCAAA.s3070416@student.anu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <02ee01c0b973$2aec7110$1800000a@felipe>

Hi Brett.

Sorry for the late response.

Last wednesday I met a research group on GIS from my University - now I am
part of it.
There is a project from this group wich aims to develop a architecture for
geo-data delivery via Web. It seems it will begin by metadata (in the 1st
phase), and then advance to the data itself, so the Metadata-base Managment
System that I meant has a very good prospect to be used here.
Maybe we'll receive some funding to conduct this project, but even if it
does not happen, there will be more people working on it than there is
today. I'm trying hard to convince them to implement it as free software.

> I have spent quite a long time trying to work out how this should be
> done and I'm still looking at options. You mentioned the GML2 format
> for GIS data. I would like to use this in order to comply with OpenGIS
> standards but I'm not aware of any free web-GIS that can support it,
> or any conversion tool that can read/write it.
>
AFAIK, there is not a free software library that supports it. Stephen Lime,
Internet Applications Analyst from the Minnesota DNR said they are currently
working to add GML output to UMN-MapServer. And I'm trying to convince a
colleague to build a shp2gml conversor...

> The format of GPS track logs is also something I've been meaning to
> learn more about. Do you know if NMEA is a format used by the majority
> of GPS receivers? If not, are there many GPS log formats that make up the
> majority of the market share?
>
NMEA is a well accepted format. But some vendors, like Garmin, commonly add
its own keywords to implement some additional features.

> >And about the 3rd issue, I think a set of guidelines would be enough
> >to drive the users efforts. And, when in doubt (about category
> >classification, and data assurence, for example), I would leave the
> >decision to the user. Maybe a rating mechanism of bases by users
> >would be a good reasonable solution.
>
> I think you might be right here. I guess what I'll be doing initially is
> trying to find out what does work and improving the process over time.
>
the Bazaar style... (from the Eric Raymond's book).

Good luck, and stay in touch.

Felipe.