Slashgeo

Access to geospatial data and metadata is amongst the great challenges of our discipline. The geowanking list lead me to the OSGeo Geodata Metadata Requirements wiki page, which as close ties with their Public Geospatial Data Project. If they succeed in their mission, which includes "Run a repository of open geodata", it may have numerous significant positive impacts. See related stories below (this PGDP project was featured on slashgeo last March).

The Mapping Hacks blog summarize interesting discussions about metadata held at the FOSS4G2006 conference last week. From the blog: "Without a focus on re-use, a focus on the client-side application interfaces, communicating the ability to make sense of the data visually, to speed up the data analytics; metadata is useless. Without good metadata, data is useless. To make data dance for others, I need to clearly know what a web service will offer; to know how I can legally recombine and republish data in different ways. It helps to know how others have classified, verified, contextualised, represented data. Without reusable, intelligible data, software is useless; machines will fall short of their capacity for making humans’ lives easier; semiautomation that allows us to bootstrap communication, to generate seemingly-meaningful new conclusions, faster."

The OSGeo mailing list links to a new articles on open source GIS from the GIS Development magazine, including articles on Quantum GIS and deegree. From the "Open Source Tools for GIS Professionals" article: "Open Source Software (OSS) has been maturing over the last years into robust, well-supported tools whose code base grows exponentially. Open Source GIS is no exception to this trend and it is now able to address the needs of GIS professionals worldwide. [...] Building on existing OSS operating systems, database, web services and software development technologies, today we find well-established OSS systems focused on geospatial applications. These systems range from spatially enabled databases like PostGIS, data analysis environments like GRASS, web server technologies (MapServer, GeoServer, Deegree) and client-building tools (MapBuilder, MapBender) to professional desktop GIS tools like gvSIG. Due to their emphasis on interoperability, these OSS tools have strong support for OGC standards, including web geoservices." See the open source community topic to learn more about previous stories on the subject.

Alvaro Anguix writes "gvSIG 1.1.1, a partial update of gvSIG 1.1, is now available for download in which some problems detected by our users have been fixed, so it is possible to working normally with the application. As usual, it can be downloaded from the Download section of the web page. The problems fixed in this distribution can be checked from the Release Notes Section and to install the partial update you must have gvSIG 1.1 correctly installed. On the other hand, the pilot application awarded the development contract for the 3D Extension by the Regional Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport is available too. It allows the creation of 3D Views, XYZ-projected as well as spherical (planetary), where local and remote data sources can be loaded as layers, and displayed using most of the options available in 2D like transparency, labeling, legends, etc. It's available in the Extensions section of the web page and to install this extension you must have correctly installed gvSIG 1.1.1 version." I copied below several previous stories on the open source GIS gvSIG.

Alvaro Anguix writes "The ArcSDE client extension for gvSIG 1.1.1 that allows users to access this kind of spatial databases, easily loading geometries by using the same interface as the rest of database layers is available. So far this extension only allows access to vector layers in the database. From the gvSIG project, we would like to sincerely thank the Ministry for Sustainable Development and Territorial Planning of the Region of Murcia for its dedication to supporting this new extension, substantially improving the application for the benefit of all members of the gvSIG community. It is available in the Extensions option from the Downloads section of the web page. Advice: To install this extension you must have correctly installed gvSIG 1.1.1 version. Regards, Alvaro Anguix gvSIG Team" See also gvSIG related stories below.

Alvaro Anguix writes "Hello everyone

This mail is being sent to several lists, so I apologize for those who receive multiple copies.

We intend to put in place an infrastructure that allows collaboration on a speedy, direct and open way with gvSIG.

We are at the beginning of this work, but we prefer to announce it and start realeasing what we are doing, better than waiting to have “the Cathedral”.

You can visit https://gvsig.org/ to see what we are having prepared. In the Documentation section, you will find documentation for users and on-line developers.

At the same time, two of the issues on which we are taking into account the Community as much as possible, are testing and translations tasks.

All of you interested in testing should contact Manual Madrid indicating in which areas of gvSIG you would like to help as testers, if you are a single tester or a coordinator of a testing group, and all those things that might occur to you.

With regard to the translations, the coordinator is Mario Carrera . We know that several groups of translators are being organized in different places like Germany and Italy. We have great interest in having the highest quality in english translations, as a base from which extend gvSIG to other linguistic communities. Of course, this is applying not only to the gvSIG interface but to the documentation in general.

That's why, on the issue of translation into English, we would like to have translators and supervisors, that are mostly specialists in Geomatics and english native-tongued.

Finally, a few days ago we were in the 2^nd Meeting in Open GIS Software in Girona. We congratulate the organizers and greet all the people with whom we had the opportunity to share a few days very rewarding, both professionally and personally.
Wish the Meetings of Girona become an unmissable event every year.

Sincerely, Gabi"
gvSIG has been mentioned several times before, see related stories below.

Alvaro Anguix writes "From 1st to 5th December 2008, Valencia will play host to the 4th gvSIG Conference in the Valencia Conference Centre. This event is organized by the Regional Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (CIT). The Open Geospatial Consortium Meeting and the Eclipse Day event will be celebrated at the same time. The objective is to consolidate them as the benchmark forum for open source GIS projects, to create a framework for defining open source and interoperable GIS standards and to create a conference where experiences can be shared among FLOSS communities.

The 4th gvSIG Conference aims to make the most of the growth of this technology and bring together experts, scientists, institutions, companies and students thanks to the support of the authorities, universities and participating companies, without whose help this project and the organization of these event would not be possible.
The 4th gvSIG Conference is the setting for one of the many planning meetings organized by the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Technical Committee and the international Eclipse Day event too. The aim of the first one is to facilitate the exchange of ideas in an open source technology environment. The theme of the international Eclipse Day event, on 2nd December, will be “Modeling Technologies and CASE tools”.

The website will be available in a few days. There you will find all the information regarding the conference.

Regards,
The 4th gvSIG Conference organization comitee."