[Qgis-developer] Map for blinds

Tue Jul 14 09:43:07 PDT 2015

Hi Stefan!

Have you read about geonames? I think it could help in some ways to make a
QGIS plugin or standalone application. See here for more information about
geonames project (http://www.geonames.org/about.html). The geonames
database contains some useful informations regarding your needs: name,
latitude, longitude, and fcode (see here for the list of fcode
http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html). For example, fcode could be
ADM1 (first-order administrative division e.g a state or province), ADM2
(second-order administrative division e.g city). Having that informations,
what you can do is to:

   1. Download all countries geonames offline from here
   http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/
   2. Convert the .txt files into sqlite database. The step 1 and step 2
   should be done outside of the apps (could be run as a background service as
   the geonames is also updated per day)
   3. Load the maps into QGIS, let the plugin divide the maps into set of
   squares, for each square query to geonames database to get all the rows
   that have latitude and longitude inside the square. The last part is to
   restructure the returned rows into useful information with the fcode
   (mapping the fcode into some useful informations - e.g what city or what
   state it is). And as some administrative boundaries could exist inside the
   square, it's possible to have more than 1 administrative region in a square
   though.

That is a really rough idea, I hope I get your idea correctly.

Regards

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 11:20 PM, Štefan Kiss <stefan.kiss at nextra.sk> wrote:

>    Hi eweryone!
>
>   I am not a developer but I have a question or the appeal to developers
> of qgis or qgis plugins.
>
>   My name is Stefan and I am from Slovakia. I am a blind user of computer.
> I am using a screenreader which reads me a text from screen. So I cann work
> with texts, e-mail, webpages or sounds but no with pictures and maps. But I
> am interested in geography and for a long time I am searching some
> possibility how could the blind browse the maps. I would like to know how
> the world looks, which countryes are around my country etc. I think that
> the sole possibility for blind is a reverse geocoding when I types  some
> gps coordinates and the application or webservice returns me the
> information about locality. I used a Nominatim service for this point, and
> it was great to see which countryes are below my slovakia (when I step by
> step typed to Nominatim the 48,18 coordinates and then went to south by
> decrementing the latitude from 48 to 45, 40 to 0). But Nominatim  is not
> reliable source of informations because Nominatim has not implemented a
> seas and oceans as areas. So when I typed some coordinates for example on
> Adriatic sea, Nominatim returns the nearest city or country and the result
> was uncorrect for me.
>
>   I am little programming in Delphi and I tried to parse an osm files
> (openstreetmaps). I cann read the informations about nodes or acquire all
> tags of nodes but I am not able to draw the areas which are in osm files
> represented as relations.
>   Now I found Qgis, I installed it and inported the osm file with map of
> my country (Slovakia) to Qgis. I am blind so I cann not work with wievs or
> graphs. But I would like create my own sqlite database  with informations
> about cityes and countryes as a map for me as blind. My idea is that I
> split the inported map  to little virtual squares by 0.01x0.01 and to each
> square add an information about country and city. Then will be very simple
> for me to browse a map with left right up and down arrowkey because when I
> will to increment or decrement latitude or longitude, the application will
> search the relevant square in database and tell me where I am on the map.
>
>   Dear developers, please, it would be possible create some plugin for
> Qgis which browses the inported map from west to east and from north to
> south step by step and on each 0.01x0.01 square  detects inside  which
> polygons is this square situated? For example - I download from openstreet
> webpage the map of Slovakia, inport it to Qgis and run the plugin. The
> slovakia.osm file contains informations for rectangle
>  <bounds minlat="47.72" minlon="16.82" maxlat="49.62" maxlon="22.570"/>
>   there are 190 lines and  575 columns it gives
> cca 110000 squares together. The plugin creates a sqlite database and
> writes the informations about each square to them. I dont need the
> addresses housenumbers or other points. Only countryes, cityes or other
> polygons are interesant for me. After this conversion I could browse the
> map in the simple application in which I could increment and decrement
> latitude and longitude by left right up and down arrow and the application
> could search in database the relevant information and tell me where I am.
> With so plugin I could convert more countryes and I could to have a special
> "map for blind".
>   Please is this my idea very fantastic or would it possible to make?
>
>  PS: I searched  also online reverse geocoding services for this point but
> the problem is that online services are limited and only my small country
> needs 110000 requests and if I wanted to process the whole of Europe, it
> would take a very long time. So I think that this task is better to do
> ofline at home.
>
>      Thanks
>
>      Stefan
>
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-- 

*-------------------*

*Akbar Gumbira*
*Software Engineer*
*Geospatial, NLP, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence*
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