[Freegis-list] map composing software?

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

Hi Joe,

On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 11:46:16PM +0100, Joe Desbonnet wrote:
> I am constructing my own street map of a town in Ireland (as our national
> Ordinance Survey charge ridiculous fees for use of their data).
> 
> I am doing the surveying myself using a GPS unit (now that SA is off I am
> getting excellent quality data). I've already written a Java map viewer (see
> http://www.wombat.ie/java/galwayexplorer/ )

wow, thats ridiculous. Just two days ago I was contacted by someone
approaching the same for the city of Oslo, Norway.
They will have a website soon, perhaps already this week.
It is their plan to create Free Data and licensed with the GPL or
a more suiting license in the same spirit.

> Currently I construct the map data by manually entering co-ordinates into a
> text file. I find this very, very tedious and has been the main obstacle to
> completing this project.
> 
> I'm looking for software whereby I can compose the map graphically by
> importing all my raw GPS points and maybe some aerial photos and then
> drawing over this layer with line segments, polygons etc.
> 
> Can anyone suggest something that might suit my needs? Ideally this software
> should run on Linux/unix, but I would consider using Windows if necessary.

The Oslo people are planning an automatic system that will transfer data from
the GPS (with support of the library JEEPS) to GRASS and then to a web page.
All this is also a Linux solution - and all is GPLed.
In a short discussion we unfolded the idea to extend initiatives all over Europe
wherever we can find interested people with GPSs. 

Linking the effords will make such a project recognized and perhaps put some
pressure on authorities to release their (at least some basic) GI data as Free Data.

Regards

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner				http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH				  	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS						       http://freegis.org/