[OSGeo-Discuss] Call for help: GDAL and txt2shp.py

[Kjell Are Refsvik]

Hi,

I am a graduate student in Information Technology at Ostfold  
University College - Dept. of Computer Science.

Nearing the end of my thesis on the challenges and opportunities  
related to digital photographs I would like to write some code that  
process pictures and makes a HTML web album (with an embedded map with  
a numbered legend on it) using open source tools.

Inspired by GeoPerrys note on command-line style approach to using  
software (http://www.perrygeo.net/wordpress/?p=105) I have been  
looking for a basic unix toolset to process geodata.

My geo-data come in the form of a pile of geo-tagged images and my own  
maps (shapefiles), and going back to GeoPerry, I found a python script:

http://www.perrygeo.net/wordpress/?p=5

...that appears to do more or less what I want.

I should mention that my I have little experience in programming in  
general and that diving deep into the terminal on my Mac OS X  
installation feels a bit daunting. Even so, I was able to upgrade my  
Python-installation yesterday and install GDAL and all its  
dependencies (I think) to get the script (txt2shp.py) to work.

When I run the script:
http://www.ia-stud.hiof.no/~kjellare/misc/Terminal.png

...using my data as input:
http://www.ia-stud.hiof.no/~kjellare/misc/Norway_map.zip
http://www.ia-stud.hiof.no/~kjellare/misc/input.txt

...and view the output shapefile that comes out of it, I observe this  
strange offset between the map (or Norway) and my data (geodata from  
images taken in Norway) and know something must be wrong.

http://www.ia-stud.hiof.no/~kjellare/misc/QGIS.png

Not knowing a whole lot about GIS, I would really appreciate help on  
how to proceed from here to:

1. Work out the reason behind, and how to fix the offset problem
2. Change the map projection (preferably to Mercator) and have the  
legend dots numbered
3. Output a png of a mesh between the map and the legend for web use

Best regards,

Kjell Are Refsvik
Graduate student
Ostfold University College
Norway