Last update:
Fri May 3 13:50:39 2024
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In this day of GUI GIS, sometimes you can’t beat the good old command line for getting a job done, regardless of whether you use Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, or Windows. This may sound strange coming from someone heavily invested in a GUI project but its true. Case in point - I recently needed to create two seamless regional layers from over 100 individual shapefiles. The source shapefiles were stored in individual subdirectories two levels deep.
The Pragmatic Programmers have announced the upcoming Desktop GIS title.
a great divide separates the typical open source developer and user. each has differing expectations, assumptions, and priorities. the interaction between developer and user can be helpful, cordial, confrontational, or antagonistic. of course this all stems from being on opposite sides of the fence. the key to a successful relationship is communication and understanding (not exactly a new revelation). unfortunately its not possible for one developer to communicate directly with thousands of users.
The MapServer Technical Steering Committee today approved an RFC that calls for MapServer to join the newly formed Open Source Geospatial Foundation. A poll has been put up on the MapServer site (login required) to collect the responses from the community. So far the vote is unanimously in favor of joining, although the poll has only been open for about an hour. Some thought it interesting that MapServer didn’t join immediately, given it was at the center of the failed MapServer Foundation attempt at the end of last year.
Following up on my last post, Running Scripts in the Python Console, I created a plugin to simplify running scripts: The Script Runner plugin allows you to add your scripts to a list so they are readily available. You can then run them to automate QGIS tasks and have full access to the PyQGIS API. In addition, you can view information about the classes, methods, and functions in your module as well as browse the source:
This weekend I finished reviewing Pragmatic Version Control Using Git by Travis Swicegood. If you are a git user or interested in learning about the latest in version control for your source code, check it out. The book is available in beta now.
I guess Ubuntu must be popular. I’m just trying to upgrade my Feisty install so I can do the upgrade to Gutsy. Looks like it’s going to take a while…
One of the challenges in any open source project is accepting contributions from people that don’t have, need, or want access to your centralized source code repository. Managing repository accounts for occasional or one-time contributors can be come a bit of an administrative issue. To date, the QGIS project has accepted one-time or occasional contributions through patches submitted via a help ticket. To make it easier for you to contribute to QGIS, we have created a clone of the Subversion repository on GitHub.
This is an unofficial recap of the OSGF meeting, based on my recollections having spent 10 hours on IRC and the phone. I’m sure the foundation will release an official version of the day’s events, so take my comments with a grain of salt. As I stated in an earlier post, the name was chosen early on and without an excessive amount of debate. OSGF rolls off the tongue rather easily and has a nice ring to it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that storing rasters in a database is of dubious value, particularly from a data warehouse perspective. If you manage a collection of rasters that are updated on a frequent basis, storing them in a relational database with ArcSDE quickly becomes a pain. I’m not talking about a dozen or so rasters, but rather tens of thousands. The overhead of the database and middleware just doesn’t seem to be worth it.
Matthew Perry poses the question: Why is the command line a dying art?. Funny how these things go–I was thinking about posting on this same topic just the other day, although I may be repeating myself. The efficiencies of the command line cannot be overstated. I too have seen that deer in the headlights look when a GUI-only user is first exposed to a command prompt. I have also seen people spend days on a data conversion project that could easily be accomplished in hours (or less).
The book is now available in beta. Excerpts from two of the chapters are available online. What’s a beta book? Well in this case it’s a lot like software—feature complete and ready for you to give it a spin. The announcement from the Pragmatic Bookshelf: The Pragmatic Bookshelf | Desktop GIS “From Google Maps to iPhone apps, geographic data and visualization is quickly becoming a standard part of life. Desktop GIS shows you how to assemble and use an Open Source GIS toolkit.
I’ve had to lower my expectations of the Open Source GIS user community. Now that I have your attention, I’ll explain. The OSGIS user community by and large is composed of a great bunch of folks. Its the few that have soured my outlook a bit. I repeatedly see posts to mailing lists blasting one application or the other (usually not to the project’s own list but another). The software stinks, doesn’t work right, the developers are stupid, its not as good as X, Y, or Z, and so forth.
The raster calculator allows you to perform mathematical operations on each cell in a raster. This can be useful for converting and manipulating your rasters. Operators include: Mathematical (+, -, *, /) Trigonometric (sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan) Comparison (<, >, =, <=, >=) Logical (AND, OR) To perform operations on a raster or rasters, they must be loaded in QGIS.
I use Linux and OS X as my primary operating systems. Lately I have been using the Powerbook exclusively with ssh or FreeNx to work on the Linux machines on the network. I started off to simply repartition my Powerbook and then reinstall OS X and put Ubuntu on the new partition. That was two days ago. Things are pretty much back to normal now. I have a dual boot system that I can take with me and run my favorite GIS software on both platforms as needed.
The Quantum GIS (QGIS) project is happy to announce that the Asia Air Survey Co., Ltd (AAS), a Japanese international consulting company, has become a Gold Sponsor. AAS has committed to providing 9,000 EUR (~$11,000 US) each of three years, beginning in November 2012. The AAS sponsorship is yet another indication that QGIS is a mature and stable project which continues to provide innovative open source GIS software. The QGIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) wishes to thank AAS for their continuing commitment.
It amazes me how people fail to communicate when speaking about technical matters. I’m sure you have heard this refrain: “My computer doesn’t work” or perhaps “Program XYZ blows up”. Ok, in the general sense there is some information being conveyed here. Often times the speaker is not merely providing a fact but asking for help in a very oblique manner. Before you think I’m picking on the poor newcomer, I’m not.
In an effort to obtain a faster and lightweight solution, I decided to use Lighttpd (AKA Lighty) with FastCGI to power MapServer. Snooping around the MapServer site yielded no clues on how to configure Lighty. It turns out to be fairly simple. Here is the Lighttpd configuration: fastcgi.server = ( “/maps” => ( “localhost” => ( “socket” => “/tmp/mapserver-fastcgi.socket”, “check-local” => “disable”, “bin-path” => “/usr/lib/cgi-bin/mapserv”, “min-procs” => 1, “max-procs” => 6, “max-load-per-proc” => 4, “idle-timeout” => 20 ) ) )
The forum (http://forum.qgis.org) has been closed for new registrations and marked read-only. Users have been encouraged to use http://gis.stackexchange.com instead. If you have an thoughts on the closure, good, bad, or otherwise, please comment.
This post is for those of you that build QGIS on a regular basis and want to keep up with everything going on in the current release branches (1.7.2 and 1.8) as well as the master branch that will eventually become version 2.0. While you can do all your work in one clone, this method has a couple of advantages, at the expense of a bit of disk space: Quicker compiles compared to branch switching, especially if you are using ccache Less likelihood of making a merge mess when switching branches The basic steps are:
