Soon it is going to be all Developer Summit all the time in the GIS blogosphere. Is there anybody going who has also been to any of the previous MapServer or Open Source Geospatial meetings? A similiar expectation seems to be building, with a relatively small group of people looking forward to less marketing spiel and more insight into their favorite platform. I would like to hear how it goes from someone who has seen how we do this thing in the open source community.
I got back to Fort Collins at 1:30 a.m. today and have tried to come up with a brief summary of the PrimaGIS and Zope 3 code sprint hosted by OpenApp last week. We did not provide much commentary during the event. You really had to be there, as the expression goes. Our colleagues on the #zco channel on IRC or subscribers to the project commits list saw only a flood of commit messages.
What is a code sprint, anyway? It is a very intensive coding session with multiple developers working at a rate that is not sustainable for long. Hence the word sprint. It works well for Python programming, and has become a part of the culture. We went at it for 3 solid days. Kai and Michael probably could have gone longer, but I was pretty cooked at the end.
This was a smaller one than the Zope 3 sprint Michael had been in last year, and fairly easy to coordinate. We started out with a whiteboard full of goals and issues, and it flowed from there. We would work together for a bit, then split up across a bunch of tasks, repeating in a cycle. With more developers we definitely would have needed a coach or two to keep us synchronized and prevent bottlenecks, something to keep in mind for the next time. I brought my iBook to the sprint, which has been more of a business than development computer for me of late, and suffered a bit. It was a bit like running multiple 400s in dress shoes.
Kai arrived yesterday afternoon, and we spent some time on strategery, but today was the first full day of programming.
That's Kai Hanninen, the PrimaGIS lead, in the background, and Michael Kerrin from OpenApp in the foreground. First thing we did today is firm up PCL's interfaces, and then began to dive into Zope 3. Before the day was through we were able to almost entirely replace the existing Zope cartographic objects with Zope 3 utilities, and enable PrimaGIS to render simple maps. Tomorrow we will attempt to get PrimaGIS back to its full capabilities, and hopefully make some progress on the user interface.
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Author: James Fee
There really isn't enough red in maps these days.I had a good conversation with Artem Pavlenko yesterday. He showed me the improvement in mapnik labels and we agreed to think about -- and maybe even do something about -- sharing a feature model between mapnik and PCL. His comments were very encouraging, and I am eager to see more convergence.
Author: Chris Holmes
Sharing feature models +1! Definitely do all that you can to get cooperation on a common feature model, it will likely end up benefiting you hugely. And start earlier rather than later.Announcement should appear soon at http://www.osgeo.org/. There are a bunch of brand new (to me) names among the usual suspects.
Update: Damn you news-makers! I'm pulling the list, which has mutated. Let's just wait for the web site to be updated.
It has been getting read lately, so I would like to follow up on a previous post about MapServer and the P* languages. I made a few predictions about the future of MapServer language bindings, and they have been both right and wrong.
It's no longer possible to use Google to research the mapserver-users list due to the terrible decision to put the list behind a subscription wall, and the UMN listserv has a rather crippled search interface. It is Web -2.0, a big step backwards. My evaluation of trends in language usage is therefore anecdotal, but I get the distinct impression that, overall, interest in scripting MapServer went down across the board in the second half of 2005.
Author: Ricardo Stuven
> It's no longer possible to use Google to > research the mapserver-users list due to the > terrible decision to put the list behind a > subscription wall, and the UMN listserv has a > rather crippled search interface. Check out http://www.gmane.org/Author: Sean
Right. In the past I weighed mapscript popularity by comparing the number of hits on Google. Gmane lets me search, but it doesn't give me a hit count.It's another ridiculously nice day here in Fort Collins. The second in a row with 70+ (F) temperatures. It's positively vernal. I'm back from a somewhat muddy lunch hour run on my regular route, and the ponds that were completely iced over just two days ago are clear. I even saw a snapping turtle sunning itself on a half-submerged log. Meanwhile at Joe Wright, just an hour west of here up Highway 14, we've got a well above average snowpack that should provide for a long Spring ski season.
Lee Martinez Park, my trailhead, is one of the top features of Fort Collins. It butts right up against the Northwest corner of downtown adjacent to the Cache la Poudre River. Upstream are a series of City natural areas, and an ambitious trail system that may eventually reach the mouth of the Poudre Canyon some 20 miles to the NW. As you can see in the Google (and DigitalGlobe) imagery, the Poudre River Corridor and Lee Martinez Park bring a bit of the wild right into the heart of the city. We're really fortunate that undeveloped land remains on the edge of Fort Collins, and it seems like much of it to the NW might be preserved. Southwards, towards Denver, it's a lost cause.
Another nice springtime feature of Fort Collins is the New Belgium Brewery's Biere de Mars. I don't think it's quite as spicy as it was back in the day, but it's still one of the most unique and gamey mass-produced beers on the market. As far as I'm concerned, March on the Front Range could go on forever.
Update (2008-01-21)
Update: http://sgillies.net/blog/429/geometries-for-python-update/
The next release of PCL will include two new components: PCL-Spatial, and PCL-Data, industrial-strength geometries and an agile feature model for Python programmers. I'm going to write about geometries today, and about the feature model in a day or two.
PCL-Spatial is a Python package that wraps and extends GEOS. The Geometry Engine - Open Source is a C++ port of Vivid Solutions' Java Topology Suite, and is the open source C/C++ library for spatial predicates and geometric operations. It's used in GDAL, MapServer, and MapGuide Open Source, to name a few applications, and Safe Software and Autodesk are funding work that will eventually produce a GEOS 3.0 release.
Why not use one of the existing Python geometry modules? Good question. The short answer is that none of them are quite good enough. Everything out there right now comes up a bit short in capability, usability, or portability.
Interesting story this morning on NPR's Weekend Edition about coordinate reference systems and emergency response. Dan Charles did a nice job explaining how useful the National Grid (Hey, what do you know: Plone) is to helicopter-borne National Guardsmen, and how little use it is to someone driving a squad car or ambulance on network of streets. The conventional street address is just a better match for the topology.
Author: Mark Whitney
"and how little use it is to someone driving a squad car or ambulance on network of streets" What is this part of Sean's statement based upon? Given the lack of implementation, how would anyone know? Given it's very valuable use to many thousands responding to disaster areas, and at least one percent of USA fire departments pre-911 for everyday use (same FD frequency as individual versions lat/long).... Similar system in Great Britain widespread..., is it "how little use" or is it "the extreme lack of leadership in USA government regarding a universal map reference has thus far kept it's usefulness from being fully realized, therefore recognized or even remotely known"?Author: Sean
In a automobile, you are pretty much constrained to one dimension, and people still think in terms of "turn right on sycamore, left on oak, ..." because it really works. I'm not saying the national grid isn't useful, just that it doesn't help automobile navigation.Author: Mark Whitney
Just saw my first TV commercial where the nav system in the vehicle was voice controlled. I'm driving down the road non-disaster/non-emergency, all street signs are present and accounted for, a friend calls me to invite me to a picnic using “0044 9732” (and just to be high-tech a few years from now..., nav system automatically computes for nearest grid/prompts for 100k id if different, then routes...), just repeating that simple 10 meter geoaddress..., with no worries re. street number and accuracy of geocodes, especially in rural areas, nor street names, multiple same city…, avenue, way, circle, route, hwy.... Of course, my friend could include a place name, street address... in voice or other commo should needs be, but with grid first communications, the future of location service devices, this would become a valuable advisory….. Mark "In a automobile, you are pretty much constrained to one dimension, and people still think in terms of "turn right on sycamore, left on oak, ..." because it really works. I'm not saying the national grid isn't useful, just that it doesn't help automobile navigation."