[OSGeo-Discuss] RE: Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Fawcett, David]

I wonder if Mirone allows you to create VRT files (or could be modified
to do it).  http://w3.ualg.pt/~jluis/mirone/index.htm

David.

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Brent Fraser
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 1:06 PM
To: Julia Harrell; OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] RE: Next 5 years for OSGeo


Julia,

   Two very good points.   The first, cartographic output, comes up a
few times 
a year and OSGEO has a wiki page on it:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Cartographic_Library.  In my opinion
the 
solution described on the wiki is way too ambitious and instead should
focus on 
creating a library of helper functions to deal with only the map
surround 
components (leave the symbology and GUI up to the desktop app, etc).  My
current 
workflow calls for Mapserver to render the map portion in PDF (maybe
someday 
create a GeoPDF), and use Inkscape to interactively add most of the
surround 
(still have to figure out the graticule).

   On the second point, image catalogs, GDAL's VRT format may be a good 
replacement.  But I don't know of a GUI tool to create/edit a VRT file,
only a 
couple of command line tools to create them.  In theory, any desktop app
using 
the GDAL library should be able to use VRT files, but I haven't done any

performance testing...

Best Regards,
Brent Fraser

Julia Harrell wrote:
> One thing I'll mention, in addition to all the other good comments 
> that have already been posted, is that I have a really difficult time
trying to get the GIS users in my organization to even consider making a
switch to one of the open GIS desktop applications instead of the
expensive proprietary commercial package they currently use, because
(more often than not) of the rather big gap in the "aesthetic quality"
of the cartographic products the open GIS packages can (easily) produce.
Despite continuing improvements over the last couple of years, the gap
will still need to close a good bit more in terms of "average GIS users"
being able to quickly and easily produce production quality map products
before there's much real hope of any significant numbers of them being
willing to migrate to open GIS desktop packages. Some of the open GIS
server packages can produce some really beautifully rendered map images
now, but the desktop packages don't seem to be quite there yet.  Eas
y map product templates (for unsophisticated end users) for placing all
the map marginalia/decorations (labeling, symbols, legends, titles,
charts, etc) and being able to produce a professional looking map
quickly is still missing. All that "off the map crap" (as someone - I
can't recall who - once called it)  really does matter to a lot of our
users, who often have to be able to compose and print (or render to PDF)
some really slick looking, high resolution maps for public hearings and
other meetings and presentations. 
> 
> Being able to use the "old style" Arcview DBF file raster image 
> catalogs in an open GIS desktop package  is another pain point for a
lot of our users. We still use those a lot because we have some people
who are tied to Arcview 3x (god help 'em) because of various extensions.
I also prefer not to switch to a proprietary "geodatabase" raster
catalog because the DBF-based ones can also do double duty (in complete
shapefile format) as raster catalog tile index layers for Mapserver. I
don't really want to have migrate a separate copy of our imagery to some
proprietary "geodatabase" raster catalog data structure that only a
single product can use. Also, with our "bandwidth issues" in remote
field offices, connecting to a web map service is not always feasible,
or even possible. We need to be able to have our imagery in a raster
catalog that resides a local network file server where multiple users
can all access it simultaneously in R-O mode, or even on a portable hard
drive for
 use out in the field.  This kind of raster catalog functionality seems
to still be missing in several open GIS desktop packages that might
otherwise be somewhat viable contenders as an Arcview replacement for
"average" or "casual"  desktop GIS users. If such functionality does
exists as a plugin somewhere, maybe I just haven't found it yet, or
maybe recent docs aren't fully available in English yet for some
packages. If anyone can point me to a link for an open GIS Desktop
package that has a plugin for Arcview "old style" DBF raster catalogs,
with English docs, that "just works" with minimal manual configuration
(no checking anything out of subversion or compiling any source code), a
few of our users will be very eager to give it a test.
> 
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