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| Subject: | Re: [gislist] Newbie needs advice on GIS data formats |
| Date: |
10/31/2005 08:10:02 AM |
| From: |
Patrick Weber |
|
|
Bill
I would go with the Comma Delimited text file approach, as it truly is
the most open approach, and any GIS(and other software categories,
starting with Excel) can read such a format.
As for a cheap GIS software, you could have a look at Manifold, which
has the best price/features ratio in the whole of the GIS world. It
might be marginally more expensive than shareware programs, but offers
most of the abilities of the full blown GIS packages from the likes of
ESRI or MapInfo.
With your data, you could do some powerful GIS analysis, combining other
remote sensing data would certainly be interesting.
Bill Thoen wrote:
> Probably the best format you could use for these point-oriented data is a
> simple comma delimited text file. This can be read by all GIS software as
> well as all database and spreadsheet software. In short, everyone could use
> this format. And since you don't yet know what GIS you're going to use it
> seems premature to pick a fixed data format yet.
>
> However, if you want a GIS format, the MapInfo Interchange Format (MIF) is
> documented here: http://www.directionsmag.com/mapinfo-l/mif/AppJ.pdf. The
> other (more popular) data format is ESRI Shape and the URLs for its
> documentation have just been posted in this list recently. Perhaps someone
> who knows where the gislist archives are can supply that one to you too.
>
> - Bill Thoen
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 03:42:55PM +1000, Bill Fulton wrote:
>
>> Dear GIS wizards
>>
>> Our small volunteer group researches whale behaviour. We cruise along with a
>> group of whales, recording every now and then, on a Pocket PC, the position
>> of the whales (lat/long), position of influencing factors like commercial
>> whalewatch boat, and environmental conditions like water depth, temperature
>> and weather, and whale behaviour. All this is put into a data file (in an
>> XML format actually, but that's neither here nor there).
>>
>> What would be nice would be if I wrote a data conversion program to convert
>> this data to some standard- format GIS file. Then the new file could be fed
>> into a GIS program to draw maps of coastline or seabed, with superimposed
>> whale and boat tracks, maybe showing points of interest like where
>> whale/vessel interactions occurred.
>>
>> We can't afford to buy a proper commercial GIS program unfortunately, but a
>> shareware GIS program would be within our budget.
>>
>> I need some advice on what would be a good choice of GIS data format.
>> Obviously to be able to write the data conversion program, I will need to be
>> able to find out the exact details of the internal format of the GIS data
>> file -- a specification of the format would be fairly essential. It also
>> would be good if the chosen GIS format is not the most devilishly
>> complicated one, so the programming task will be simpler. Finally, of
>> course, it needs to be a GIS format that a good GIS shareware program will
>> support.
>>
>> So -- would appreciate any advice on a good choice of GIS file format,
>> where to find information on what the exact internal file format is, and
>> advice on good shareware GIS programs. I have Googled an awful lot but did
>> not have much joy. Thanks so much.
>>
>> -- Bill (Sydney Australia)
>>
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--
________________________________________
Patrick Weber | p.weber@ucl.ac.uk
Research Associate
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/
University College London
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