[Freegis-list] Categories for search or browse on freegis.org

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

Dear all,

this monday Heiko <heiko at intevation.de> has
joined the FreeGIS team for the rest of the
year.

We plan to work on the following three
topics (in the given order):

1. improve the freegis.org site with
	improved browse and search
	opportunities including several
	other changes.

2. release an updated version 1.1.1
	of the FreeGIS CD.

3. write a tutorial for performing
	typical GIS operations with
	free GIS products (initial version
	in German, translations would be nice).
	Of course the tutorial will  be under
	FDL :-)

We already started with the first topic.
The FreeGIS site should offer search
via several kinds of categories similar to,
but not the same as freshmeat.net.
Each entry may belong to one or
more categories. 

We want to start with three
categories of which the first
is the most important one:
 
Application type
Operating system
Programming language

We defined a set of categories
(see below) for the application type.
We would be happy if you
could comment upon it, hint on errors
or missing categories.

Thanks

	Jan

Application type
----------------

Base GIS

	Applications that provide basic processing
	routines for geo-data.

	Among basics there are geo-referencing,
	buffering and blending.


Visualisation

	Programs that generate (usually
	multi-dimensional) presentations of
	the given geo-data, enabling visual
	and other data analysis.


Interactive Viewing

	Applications to interactively
	explore geo-data.


GPS

	Programms for realtime-analysis, processing, and
	visualisation of gps-data.

	GPS is the acronym for Global Positioning System.
	With GPS you are able to locate yourself in a 3-dimensional
	system by means of bow-beats to at least 3 satelites.
	Common used systems are navstar-pgs (USA), glonass (GUS)
	and in near future gallileo (EU).
	

Remote Sensing

	Programs that process, analyse and present
	data obtained via remote sensing.

	Remote Sensing is a touch-free satellite- air- or earth-based
	aktive (radar, laserscanning, sonar, ...) or passive
	(photo, infrared-image, digital-image) observation method.
			

Web Mapping

	Web Mapping applications offer to present maps
	(vektor and/or raster) interactively on the web (ie. via http).

	Typical base functions are zooming and scrolling the map
	(navigating the map) as well as map-anchored hyperlinks (URLs) and
	object identification.


Geo-Data

	Geographic data packages.

	Geo-Data covers data explaining objects,
	land shapes and infrastructure at
	the surface of the earth, including a spatial information.


Flights

	Tools for realising free or predefined flights over
	digital terrain models.


File-format Conversion

	Tools that convert form one file format for geo-data
	to one or many others.


Projection Conversion

	Tools and applications for transfering geo-data from
	one into another projection.

	A projection is the visualisation of a point in
	n - dimensions onto a point of lesser dimension,
	e.g. 3 or 4 dimensions.
	The projections can be orthographic, stereographic,
	equal area, equal angle, equal distance and many more.


Customizable with Add-ons

	Packages/Applications that support adding
	custom applications on-top (e.g. various kinds
	of geo-data based simulations such as
	floods, run-off, clouds, etc).


Misc/Fun

	Anything not fitting into the other categories
	or related to 'fun with GIS'.
-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

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