[Qgis-user] Public Sector Mapping Agreement

[Mike]

I will say, I use GlobalMapper and I quite enjoy the ability for that
program to open .gz files. The other advantage is gml seems to compress
well, so some may prefer to store it in that format. A .gz format file isn't
as common in the windows world, so some people will find it a slight
challenge.

On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Andrew Chapman <
andrew.chapman at donkagen.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Brent
> The PSMA potentially opens the opportunity to introduce GIS to about 10k
> lowest tier UK government organisations (parish and town councils). These
> are run by volunteers with generally limited time and normally not a lot of
> computing experience beyond a word processor and photo editor. If this type
> of person is presented with a long and tortuous route to setup and evaluate
> GIS, it just will not happen.
> I realise that some of the QGIS community may feel that if users cannot
> demonstrate abilities and determination above a certain level then they
> shouldn’t be encouraged to get involved, but is that a widely held view?
> We know that a .gz is just a compressed .gml file, but in my case it took a
> while to find out. Yes, we could tell people to uncompress the file and
> leave them to find how… but this just adds one more (admittedly small)
> hurdle for them to pass.
> Possibly a way round this would be a plug-in to wrap up the (to a new user)
> complexity. Once we have a new user up and running, they can develop skills
> over time.
> Just my thoughts…
>
> Andrew
> ________________________________________
> From: pcreso at pcreso.com [mailto:pcreso at pcreso.com]
> Sent: 27 March 2011 18:54
> To: 'Noli Sicad'; Andrew Chapman
> Cc: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: RE: [Qgis-user] Public Sector Mapping Agreement
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
> A gz file is simply a zip file containing compressed files. In this case
> compressed GML files. On Linux, gunzip <file.gz> will extract them, on
> Windows most unzipping utilities will decompress & extract the contents.
>
> The uncompressed files do not appear to have a gml suffix, but if QGIS is
> set to open "all files" instead of just a specified type, it can determine
> the file type from the file contents & open them using OGR.
>
> I don't see any reason for QGIS to work wth compressed archive files
> directly, users can easily extract the contents & then open with QGIS.
>
> OGR can convert to shapefiles, or load into a database, but neither of
> these
> is a QGIS specific role, and I'm not sure a QGIS howto is the appropriate
> place for an introduction to spatial data mgmt. This would be better done
> by
> pointing at a PostGIS tutorial.
>
> Cheers
>
> Brent Wood
>
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