[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [Gvsig_english] New site demonstrating the use of Free & Open Source Software

[Simon Cropper]

On 28/04/11 11:28, Jody Garnett wrote:
> You should find that the committees mentioned are aware of these issues. In
> particular the osgeo live project is standardising on the use of the natural
> earth dataset in order to be above board.

This is good but very few people actually do work at that scale. I hope 
that now we have some data at a finer resolution we will see some other 
tutorials demonstrating techniques typically done on a day to day basis.

> If it helps; for the next release of uDig I was going to switch to the
> natural earth dataset in order to better fit with OSGeo live; and be
 > more generally interesting for a world wide audience.

This sounds good but as stated most users work at a regional level not 
continent wide level.

> From my standpoint it is annoying having any number of projects asking for
> content to be written; and no procedures in place to easily accept the
> content that is available.
>
> The first project that sits down and defines how submit word, pdf, html,
> rst, odf etc... (with manual steps if needed) will have a much greater
> chance of success. Perhaps that project will be yours?

I agree. I have resisted finalising my tutorial on 'preparing tutorials' 
so I can iron out any nuances before asking others to follow the same 
procedure. I think that after a couple of more tutorials I should be 
happy with the process and will publish my notes.

I have also developed a few simple python routines that make those 
finicky things deeded to make a webpage functional, easy to do. These 
will be published and explained on the scripting subdomain.

So far I have...
1. A reasonable HTML template (no need for contributor to change)
2. A reasonable style setup (no need for contributor to change)
3. Sound metadata model
4. Appropriate and diverse dataset to demonstrate techniques
5. Easy screen capturing procedure
6. A range of simple to use scripts to automate those few irritating 
tasks (gather images data and insert tags into HTML document, 
create/maintain navigation lists, synchronise metadata throughout 
website, create PDFs).

Most of these are reasonably stable now, so as stated above, after a few 
more published tutorials I will be releasing these for others to use.

-- 
Cheers Simon

    Simon Cropper
    Principal Consultant
    Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
    PO Box 160, Sunshine, VIC
    W: www.botanicusaustralia.com.au