Subject: [Thuban-list] export to APR ?

From: "Moritz Lennert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:15:10 +0100 (CET)

Hello,

Are there plans of creating an exportAPR extension similar to importAPR ?

Moritz

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From: Jan-Oliver Wagner <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:24:53 +0100

> Are there plans of creating an exportAPR extension similar to importAPR ?

Would it make sense to offer a migration path towards proprietary
software?

What use scenario do you have in mind?

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

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

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From: Bernhard Reiter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:47:31 +0100

> > Are there plans of creating an exportAPR extension similar to importAPR ?

Not yet.
It depends on demand 
and someone contributing or contracting us.

> What use scenario do you have in mind?

Not knowing what Moritz has in mind,
I can offer a useful scenario:

People might want to do a soft migration towards Free Software and Thuban.
They have an APR project and want to do some steps with Thuban.
They would start doing some steps with Thuban
and still keep doing old steps with their proprietary software
until they can eliminated the proprietary software in the next levels.

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From: "Moritz Lennert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 14:02:31 +0100 (CET)

> until they can eliminated the proprietary software in the next levels.

Plus:
We often work in research projects with other teams, and in some projects
some of the info is requested in apr format. So, offering an export to apr
actually allows people to migrate to free software while not (immediately)
upsetting collaborations for which we do not always control the rules.

Moritz

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From: Matt Wilkie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:08:05 -0800

> Would it make sense to offer a migration path towards proprietary 

Absolutely.

One of the biggest bug-bears of my GIS life has been man-handling data 
from one format to another; from one program to another. As a result I 
am extremely leary of *any* program which is easy-to-import combined 
with hard-to-export. At this level it doesn't matter a whit to me if the 
software is Libre or Closed. Protestations of "but the source code is 
available, you can always write your own driver" don't apply to me. I am 
not a programmer and neither are any of our GIS-using staff (about 30 
people).

I think your question should be phrased differently. It is not a 
"migration path" towards proprietary software. It is "seamless 
interaction path" with proprietary software.

I am able to use and justify a linux server on our Windows network 
because it seamlessly handles data in both directions via SAMBA. I can 
install and use an Apache webserver because I can demonstrate it runs 
equally well on both Windows and Linux servers. Indeed I have migrated 
the same website from linux to windows and back to linux without anybody 
being the wiser.  GDAL Utilities are my raster conversion tool of choice 
because I can use them from any system avaialble to me, most of which 
are Windows 2k and XP based.

cheers,

-- 
matt wilkie
--------------------------------------------
Geographic Information,
Information Management and Technology,
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
--------------------------------------------

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From: Jan-Oliver Wagner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:37:42 +0100

> Are there plans of creating an exportAPR extension similar to importAPR ?

so, after it is generally agreed that this indeed is a helpful feature:

I do not have currently plans to implement this.
Note, that
even my implementation of the importAPR extension is only a
coarse demo that needs to be completeted to get the best
import results.

An export would be more complicated because I can not
ignore various information like for the import. A consistent
apr-file needs to be written and actually only ESRI knows 
what consistent means.

Of course the file format can be reverse engineered.
It might even be possible to implement a method that, after loading
an apr-file, transscribes all changed made in Thuban to the apr-data and then
saves them alltogether with those information that were no understood
by Thuban.

However, the efford for all of this will not be low.
I estimate 1-2 weeks for a basic APR-Export. About 4 weeks
to make it use really smooth. And about another 4 weeks
to implement this transscription feature.

Best

	Jan

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From: "Moritz Lennert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:55:50 +0100 (CET)

> to implement this transscription feature.

I don't want to be misunderstood: I think this would be a helpful feature,
especially in view of convincing my colleagues to switch to Thuban, but
other features are definitely more important for us (such as proportionate
symbols, and the integration with Skencil Bernhard described in another
mail).

So, if someone implements it, great, but its absence is no showstopper...

Moritz

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From: Jan-Oliver Wagner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 16:30:29 +0100

> So, if someone implements it, great, but its absence is no showstopper...

I understood you right :-)

It was interesting to have the principle discussion.
I made the estimate especially for the archive so that anyone
who really needs this feature and is willing to pay for this finds
an estimate.

I should create a Thuban web page for such cost estimations :-)

Best

	Jan