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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> Hi eweryone!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> I am not a developer but I have a question
or the appeal to developers of qgis or qgis plugins.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> My name is Stefan and I am from Slovakia. I
am a blind user of computer. I am using a screenreader which reads me a text
from screen. So I cann work with texts, e-mail, webpages or sounds but no with
pictures and maps. But I am interested in geography and for a long time I am
searching some possibility how could the blind browse the maps. I would like to
know how the world looks, which countryes are around my country etc. I think
that the sole possibility for blind is a reverse geocoding when I types
some gps coordinates and the application or webservice returns me the
information about locality. I used a Nominatim service for this point, and it
was great to see which countryes are below my slovakia (when I step by step
typed to Nominatim the 48,18 coordinates and then went to south by decrementing
the latitude from 48 to 45, 40 to 0). But Nominatim is not reliable source
of informations because Nominatim has not implemented a seas and oceans as
areas. So when I typed some coordinates for example on Adriatic sea, Nominatim
returns the nearest city or country and the result was uncorrect for
me.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> I am little programming in Delphi and I
tried to parse an osm files (openstreetmaps). I cann read the informations about
nodes or acquire all tags of nodes but I am not able to draw the areas which are
in osm files represented as relations. <BR> Now I found Qgis, I installed
it and inported the osm file with map of my country (Slovakia) to Qgis. I am
blind so I cann not work with wievs or graphs. But I would like create my own
sqlite database with informations about cityes and countryes as a map for
me as blind. My idea is that I split the inported map to little virtual
squares by 0.01x0.01 and to each square add an information about country and
city. Then will be very simple for me to browse a map with left right up and
down arrowkey because when I will to increment or decrement latitude or
longitude, the application will search the relevant square in database and tell
me where I am on the map.<BR> <BR> Dear developers, please, it would
be possible create some plugin for Qgis which browses the inported map from west
to east and from north to south step by step and on each 0.01x0.01 square
detects inside which polygons is this square situated? For example - I
download from openstreet webpage the map of Slovakia, inport it to Qgis and run
the plugin. The slovakia.osm file contains informations for rectangle
<BR> <bounds minlat="47.72" minlon="16.82" maxlat="49.62"
maxlon="22.570"/><BR> there are 190 lines and 575 columns it
gives <BR>cca 110000 squares together. The plugin creates a sqlite database and
writes the informations about each square to them. I dont need the addresses
housenumbers or other points. Only countryes, cityes or other polygons are
interesant for me. After this conversion I could browse the map in the simple
application in which I could increment and decrement latitude and longitude by
left right up and down arrow and the application could search in database the
relevant information and tell me where I am. With so plugin I could convert more
countryes and I could to have a special "map for blind".<BR> Please is
this my idea very fantastic or would it possible to make?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> PS: I searched also online reverse
geocoding services for this point but the problem is that online services are
limited and only my small country needs 110000 requests and if I wanted to
process the whole of Europe, it would take a very long time. So I think that
this task is better to do ofline at home.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> Thanks </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> Stefan
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