[OSGeo-Discuss] Proposal: OSGeo Cartographic Library

[Ari Jolma]

Brent Fraser kirjoitti:
> Ari,
>
>   Traditionally, there has been no widely adopted
> vendor/system-independent format for specifying style
> information.  Hopefully now that there is an organization
> (the OGC) addressing open standards for geographic data
> (including styling: SLD) there will be more support for a
> styling standard.
>   

I looked around in the web a bit and found this:
http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/b584484743vk910g/
(I don't have access to Cartographica so can't read this).

ESRI seems to have .mxd files, which is their map definition file. It's 
a binary format and probably not documented. Then they have ArcXML (AXL) 
which serves the same purpose () as Mapserver mapfiles. BTW, mapfile 
format is a result of a lot of thought and practical experience. I 
believe some tools (QGIS?) can export mapfiles (can they import them?).

OGC Styled Layer Descriptor specification does not impress me, and it's 
WMS implementation specific.

GDAL has feature style specification: 
http://www.gdal.org/ogr/ogr_feature_style.html It has recently gained 
some new interest.

In my work I deal a lot with scientific data and geovisualization type 
of thing, and it would be very useful to be able to import and export 
visualization information files from desktop apps. Sometimes the problem 
solving could be based on shared development of such files.

Just thinking out loud,

Ari


-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Geoinformatiikka / Geoinformatics
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
tel: +358 9 451 3886 address: POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma