‘…the geospatial industry almost completely left behind support for UNIX-like OSes’

It is true that the proprietary GIS vendors have largely abandoned Unix and Unix-like operating systems and continue to do so. However the open source GIS community has embraced all major operating systems with software that runs on Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X, and yes, Windows. This support includes everything from the desktop to the server.

For those of us that prefer to operate in a Un*x environment, that’s good news.

        

The technical description of the format has been around for going on 12 years. In that time it has become a sort of lowest common denominator for data exchange. They’re everywhere. Making them go away is going to require a revolution of sorts.

ESRI has been sounding the death knell for the shapefile for a while now. I agree that it isn’t a perfect format but it is nearly perfectly supported.

If ESRI really wants the shapefile to go away, they will produce a fully open API for the File Geodatabase—one that can be used outside the Arc* realm. One that can be obtained and used at no cost or license fee.

There is a raft of open source programmers waiting in the wings to code against it and provide support and interoperability for the open source GIS world.

We’re waiting…

        

This leads one to wonder if it is the state of the open source software or other reasons that prevent a full migration. Take a look at the poll (right margin) and if you are a partial adopter, please vote or post a comment on what’s holding you back.

        

I’m wondering about other’s experiences in this area. To gain some insight, I’ve created a poll (right margin). Please take a second and vote.

        

$ uptime
20:20:56 up 434 days, 15:31, 2 users, load average: 2.32, 0.89, 0.53

        

It includes an example that uses CSV, GDAL/OGR VRT, QGIS, and fTools to figure out if I was in danger of being buried in a volcanic ash fall (not much danger but sounds dramatic).

        

To make the process easier, I put together a web tool to generate a plugin that can be used as a starting point. The tool creates a fully functional plugin that can be loaded in QGIS 1.x. The generated plugin contains an icon and a simple dialog with Ok and Cancel buttons.

Give the PyQGIS Plugin Builder a try and feel free to provide comments and suggestions.

        

I recently posted an article on creating a very simple standalone application with Python and QGIS 1.0. Much of the Python efforts thus far have been devoted to creating QGIS plugins. I think now that we have a stable API, you’ll begin to see more custom applications that meet a specialized need.

If you are developing such applications, it would be great to hear from you.

        

Update: It’s now shipping. See the announcement.

        

I didn’t like it.

Not to start a language flame war, but after using Python almost exclusively for 6 months, I found Java to be cumbersome. I kept thinking “if it were Python I could do it this way”.

Sending an email from Java—frightening. From Python—simple.

Lest you think I’m a Java newbie, I’ve been using it for both desktop and web applications for over 10 years.

Its ease of use and rapid development time, coupled with the fact that Python is the de facto “GIS” scripting language in most arenas, makes it my new favorite language.

Of course the old axiom still stands—To each his own…