[Freegis-list] Excel Mapping

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

Hi Andrew,

On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 01:45:41PM +0200, Andrew Alspach wrote:
> I would just like to call your attention to the mapping
> functionality that is built into Microsoft Excel. This does
> not fall within your definitions of "Free Software" but I
> believe it is in the same spirit of your Website.
> I recently discovered that the mapping functions in Excel
> are very useful for Novice users to represent data in a
> spreadsheet spatially. My job is to mainstream GIS and
> for me this means getting people to use spatial data as
> frequently as possible. Excel mapping functions  allow
> dynamic tabular data to be represented in a map. This
> is a feature that is not present in any free GIS software
> that I am aware of (please respond if you know of one)
> but is one of the strongest points of GIS software. The
> drawbacks of Excel mapping are the limited spatial
> layers available to users. (Lots of USA...some UK and
> little of the rest of the world) If your area of interest is
> The Horn of Africa, you are in luck, because the Data
> Exchange Platform for the Horn Of Africa (DEPHA)
> initiative has Excel compatible data on the web for
> downloads at: www.hornofafricadata.org  You will also
> find a How-To manual to help you along. While you are
> there check out the GeoDepot section for per-country
> spatial data layers at various scales. 

The Geo-Depot of your site looks very promising.
However, you should clearly state under which
legal terms the data you offer for download are.

If it is all free data that you are offering, you
surely have the potential to become the leading
project on this topic and I would love to coordinate
free data issues with you.

Some political thoughts:

I think that the Free Software approach is most
important for developing countries to gain independence
and eventually to be a producer of its own in the field
of IT.

Selling oneself to proprietary formats (like Excel and
the rest of the MS Office) will keep the steady grip
of industry countries.

Developing countries have the real chance to not adopt
proprietary infra-structure (steered by others) and
thus do better (be faster) than developed countries.

All the best

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

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
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