SV: [mapserver-users] Need Help with Custom (Raster) Data as Input

[Morten Sickel]

Dear Muizudeen,

As far as I understand you,you try to do three things at once....
- Learn GIS
- Learn a new programming tool (mapserver et.al.)
- Clean up your existing data

All these goals are good to try to achieve, but not at once. Most of all, when starting to learn GIS and starting to learn mapserver, you should be sure that the data you are using are of good quality, i.e. at least well defined projection and geo references, if that is not correctly set up, What I would recommend you to do is to start up using some other available data sets of the same type as what you are using (geo tiffs, or whatever) Set up a map server application using those data sets, read up on projections and geo referencing, try to find some other data sets covering the same area as the first you got, but in other projections, play around a bit with those data, also changing the projection of the map-file. This way you know that what you are doing in map server makes sense. parallell with this, you can try to collect the nessecary information on the other maps you have, and make a new map-file using those data sets. 

If the maps are scanned files, they can be made into geo-tiffs, ie a tiff file and a corresponding tfw file, the latter giving the coordinates for one of the corners of the map, the cell size and the rotation angle of the map, I don't remember the details at the moment, but that should be quite easy to google for.

best wishes.

Morten


________________________________________
Fra: mapserver-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mapserver-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] på vegne av Muizudeen Kusimo [devboyng at gmail.com]
Sendt: 26. januar 2009 09:16
Til: mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org
Emne: Re: [mapserver-users] Need Help with Custom (Raster) Data as Input

Dear All,

I appreciate the responses I have received so far but I am new to GIS so please do not take offense at my (trivial) questions.

I want to:
a) Build a web application like Google Maps.

I have:
b) Little map data that needs to be re-drawn due to it's poor quality, lack of geo-reference info and lack of coordinate grid.
c) Adjusted my map extents as advised by Rahkonen for display in Ka-Maps without luck.
d) Being reading the manuals for MapServer, Ka-Map, OpenLayers and QGIS. I hope to adopt either OpenLayers or Ka-Map as my UI + MapServer as my backend.

I would like this list to:
e) Guide me on how to achieve my aim in (a) above using my choice of technology in (d) below. Specifically, how do I prepare my poor maps (that better be re-drawn) for the tools I am studying.
f) Offer any other useful advice.

Lastly, if my questions are too elementary for this list. Can someone please point me to an appropriate list/website/irc channel.

Thanks in advance.

- Muizz