Hi Trevor! That is an interesting question, we had a GIS project in the beginning of this year where we worked with and extended PMS (Practical Map Server from ArsDigita) . On our demo site we run the project (BlueGis) together with Zope (check out www.bluedynamics.com, exactly:http://www2.bluedynamics.com:8080/BlueDynamics/products/bluegis/BlueGis). PMS has a very elegant clear structure, but it is written in java (unfortunately java has stability problems under linux and PMS sometimes locks up). We had the vision to 'pythonize' PMS, since the architecture and concept of PMS should be well portable to the Python/Zope world, but had unfortunately not enough time&money to do that on our own. I am very happy to see that there exists interest in that direction and perhaps there will be the opportunity to pythonize PMS. Regards phil *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 01.11.2000 at 15:37 twiens wrote:
I'm writing to all who responded to my query regarding mapping tools for Zope or others interested in this issue. In one of the responses, was the suggestion to start a SIG or Fishbowl.
At this point in time, I'm in a research phase for a project where a mapping interface will be needed in Zope based web application. We are starting to move into the design phase and so some technical decisions will start to be made in the next two months at which point we will begin building something.
I've received a number of other interesting replies about GIS and Zope and possible solutions. These have ranged from "I know about this" to "I use this" to "We should build something". I think there might be sufficient interest in at least starting a SIG or Fishbowl or separate list about the problem. Is there??
I'm personally a bit hesitant to even consider building yet another GIS product. There are many of them out their (see www.freegis.org) for web display, cartography, spatial analysis, etc. Obviously our interest here is web interfaces, but these other products are testimony to the ubiquitous nature of the problem; a good suite of comprehensive GIS software solutions just doesn't exist, either for free or commercially (IMHO). The approach my team will likely take on our project will be to examine existing open source products and determine if there is one that is sufficient to meet our needs and simply use it. If we can build some tools around this product to facilitate it's future use with Zope by others, we will open source those.
I would welcome the discussion of this issue, since it is important and it is one of the up and coming needs for web applications. I would welcome feedback from others who undoubtedly have significant experience and knowledge to bring to this problem.
T -- Trevor Wiens twiens@compusmart.ab.ca
The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. (Albert Einstein)
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