Subject: [Thuban-list] Roadmap changes

From: Jan-Oliver Wagner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:04:44 +0200

Hi,

the dates of the roadmap have been shifted by 15 days
which gives us 2 additional weeks to work on the integration
of the OGC SF SQL feature. The feature itself does not turn
out to be more complex than expected - it is just that the
development team was quite busy giving presentations on Thuban
in France, Belgium and Germany in the past weeks.

Furthermore, I've added italian to the aimed languages for 1.0.
A first translation will soon go into CVS.
Now we have german, french, spanish and itlian on the roadmap.

Best

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

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

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From: "August Zajonc" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 08:33:40 -0700

I'm new to GIS, but have checked out many of the GIS sites that are
available and think I understand some of the basic principles. Here's
the gist of what I'd love to be able to do, and any pointers much
appreciated. 

Some open source projects have maps of developers locations, this is
what I'm shooting for.

I'd love to start with a map of the earth and/or US that looks something
like this:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth/action?opt=-p&img=learth.evi
f

Then I would like to plot a series of points on this map, using a
command line driven program under Linux. These points would likely be
defined by lat/long coordinates.

Finally, I'd like to convert addresses into lat/long coordinates. 

The challenges I haven't gotten a clear answer to are:

Is there a good, freely available database that can convert locations
(zip/postal codes for example) into Lat/Long for the US, or the US +
other locations? 

Is there a good image of the US / World in the manner of the living
earth image above that is freely available?

I was thinking of using thuban for plotting the locations on the image,
but if there is some other standard that is good at handling things in a
batch manner (ie, no GUI) happy to hear of it. 

Thanks in advance for any pointers to what I know must be some very
basic questions!

August

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From: Bernhard Reiter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:00:56 +0200

Hi August,

> the gist of what I'd love to be able to do, and any pointers much

Usually this list is not the place for general GIS questions.
Probably comp.infosystems.gis or the FreeGIS.org mailinglist are
better places to ask. 
The latter only if you want to do it with Free Software. :)

> defined by lat/long coordinates.

That you can do nicely with GMT.
http://freegis.org/details.en.html?name=The%20Generic%20Mapping%20Tools
It can use a raster background image or even included
nice world wide coat lines which are sufficient to make a world
background map. Its documentation examples probably guides you through.

> (zip/postal codes for example) into Lat/Long for the US, or the US +

For the US you might eventually get one based on census data,
but for most countries of the world the answer is no.

> earth image above that is freely available?

Yes and several resources to create those.
Check out xrmap sunclock and its background images.

> batch manner (ie, no GUI) happy to hear of it. 

Thuban is geared toward interactive use,
so the other mentioned applications probably are more suited
to your task.

	Bernhard