<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 7. juli. 2008, at 23.54, Dane Springmeyer wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000">...</font>Well, given my completely newbie status as a GIS/Geodata user, I am very grateful for your patience, explaining these things to me.</div><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>no problem. Please do consider consulting the mailing lists of the specific software that you are using as well.</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Sorry about the lack of background info. </div><div><br></div><div>I am on a MacOS X 10.5.2 and have downloaded the latest version of Perl and Python and all the dependencies needed to run the gdal package.</div><div><br></div><div>As mentioned earlier, my goal is to set up a basic workflow to do a mashup between shapefiles that I have, and geodata inside jpeg files collected with a garmin gpx file and injected using gpsbabel. </div><div><br></div><div>As a non-programmer, and short on time, I am really hoping to be able to tie together existing software (like <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21px; ">txt2shp.py) </span>and do some easy basic shell-scripting to get this to work.</div><div><br></div><div>Going into this, I was hoping that I would come across some sort of swiss army knife style software (like exiftool or gpsbabel) that would let me add mashup-data to an existing shapefile and convert files to web-compliant formats. Seems like </div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div>...</div><div>Okay. Well that graphic is nice and simple. However, getting there through automation will be not be as easy as using Qgis to layout you map graphics and then exporting them into another design program like Scribus, Inkscape, or the GIMP to do your photo layout.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Darn. I seem to be forced into setting up a complete map server to do this? Automation is kinda the whole deal of this part of my thesis. </div><div><br></div><div>For those of you wondering what the purpose of all of this is, my thesis is about exploring technical challenges and opportunities as they related to digital photographs. As the implementation goes, the argument behind not simply using a classic Google Maps mashup has to do with longevity/preservation and the fact that I want to make web publishable albums that tries to relate to as simple/few/standard elements as possible to be accessible far into the future. </div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">I'm assuming that you want to do this with desktop based tools. </span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">If you are up for installing apache </span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>already a part of my Mac OS X installation.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">then you could utilize a variety of web based toolkits to automate the generation of the map graphic and the photo layout. I'd look into Openlayers and Geoserver (in addition to Mapserver and Mapnik), and any web framework with a powerful templating engine like django.</span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Hm... Sounds like an extensive solution that requires a lot of work. I would love to know more about how accessible these technologies are. I am just afraid that I am looking at 4-8 weeks of installing and figuring out how these solutions work, only to find out that I need to learn Python and Ruby to get it to work?</div><div><br></div><div>Yes. I know what you're saying (and I am always telling myself - don't shy away from something just because it looks complicated, but I am really hoping to finish my thesis in september :-), and my coding this solution is simply icing on the cake in terms of the weight it carries in my thesis.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">If you want to stick to the desktop Mapserver and Mapnik do have the ability to create map graphics on the command line, but it's not as simple as automating the conversion of a shapefile to png. You need to style and label your shapefile data of points along with basemap data. Therefore you will be looking to render multiple layers into a single raster png. Shp2img of the mapserver project or a the use of mapnik python bindings will be able to do this without resorting to installing and setting up a webserver, but you'll still need to create a MAPFILE that defines the styling and labeling.</span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Great. So any estimate on the time needed to get to grips with these things?</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">...</span></div><div>No, shp2img needs a MAPFILE as input (the mapfile points to your shapefile(s) - or other datasources - and tells mapserver how to render them):</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/utilityreference/shp2img">http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/utilityreference/shp2img</a></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I see. So basically - no way around installing a mapserver then :-)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">I'd recommend looking into the QGIS "Export to mapserver" plugin as well.</span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>OK. </div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; ">Mapnik can use an XML based MAPFILE, but has no command line utility to generate a png from the MAPFILE, but simple script examples can be found here:</span></div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://trac.mapnik.org/wiki/XMLGettingStarted#Step2">http://trac.mapnik.org/wiki/XMLGettingStarted#Step2</a></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>OK. On to install the mapserver then, and to read up on the supplied url. </div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0;"><br></span></font>Dane</span></div></div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Any idea on the complexity in getting the above scripting to work?</div><div><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Not too complex, but you will need to read up on how to create a MAPFILE.</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Will dive in and see what happens. </div><div><br></div><div>Kjell Are</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><br></div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Sincerely,</div><div><br></div><div>Kjell Are Refsvik</div><div>Norway</div><div><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>Discuss mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Discuss@lists.osgeo.org">Discuss@lists.osgeo.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>Discuss mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Discuss@lists.osgeo.org">Discuss@lists.osgeo.org</a><br>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss<br></blockquote></div><br></body></html>