[Mediawiki-l] [SMW-devel] Maps and Semantic Maps released

Sun Aug 23 14:41:43 UTC 2009

Hey,

Those services are indeed impressive. Thanks a lot for the awesome suggestion! I'm going to try to add a handler for this service right away :)

Cheers,
Jeroen De Dauw

Forum: code.bn2vs.com
Blog: blog.bn2vs.com

Skype: rts.bn.vs  ; Xfire: bn2vs

Don't panic. Don't be evil.
70 72 6F 67 72 61 6D 6D 69 6E 67 20 34 20 6C 69 66 65!

________________________________
From: Joel Natividad <joel.natividad at gmail.com>
To: jeroen De Dauw <jeroen_dedauw at yahoo.com>
Cc: semediawiki-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; mediawiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 4:30:17 PM
Subject: Re: [SMW-devel] Maps and Semantic Maps released

Jeroen,

Have you looked at geonames?  They have an impressive list of free web services (http://www.geonames.org/export/ws-overview.html).

I used them myself for a project 2 years back and its pretty good.

Best,
Joel

On Aug 23, 2009, at 8:12 AM, jeroen De Dauw wrote:

Hey,
>
>I see your point. Would you find the geocoding approach acceptible if an open source service was available next to the ones of Google and Yahoo? I've been seraching for such an altternate and open source service before the 0.2 release, but simply was unable to find a decent working one. If you know one, please let me know!
>
>I'm going to poke Yaron about your suggestion to add the DMS notation, if he thinks it's a good idea, I'll implement it before 0.4. Of course, if someone feels like doing that, feel free to do so, but give me a poke to avoid double work.
>
>
>Cheers,
>Jeroen De Dauw
>
> 
>Forum: code.bn2vs.com
>Blog: blog.bn2vs.com
>
>Skype: rts.bn.vs ; Xfire: bn2vs
>
>Don't panic. Don't be evil.
>70 72 6F 67 72 61 6D 6D 69 6E 67 20 34 20 6C 69 66 65!
>
>
>
>
>
>
________________________________
From: Temlakos <temlakos at gmail.com>
>To: jeroen De Dauw <jeroen_dedauw at yahoo.com>
>Cc: semediawiki-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; mediawiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 1:47:14 PM
>Subject: Re: [SMW-devel] Maps and Semantic Maps released
>
>Jeroen:
>
>Geocoding means using a proprietary service, and getting a license that could easily be revoked. I don't know how acquainted you are with American politics, but let me tell you this: Google.com has been playing politics with their search engine, their tools, everything. They have rigged their searches to push politically conservative and religiously oriented sites to the bottom of the rankings--which is why my wiki never bears mention in any search on Google, but they bear plenty of good mention on other search engines.
>
>If they have demonstrated their willingness to play politics with their search engine, what is to stop them from playing politics with any of their other /proprietary/ APIs? A /proprietor/ reserves the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason or no reason.
>
>I don't want to be held at the mercy of any /proprietor/. That rather defeats, even violates, the purpose of open-source. I want to be able to do all my maps on OpenLayers, and stay away from Google, if I can. I'm not even sure that our license (the GFDL) would even /allow/ us to do anything else. That aside, we have a policy to stay a million kilometers away from anything that even hints at a legal encumbrance.
>
>Besides: some of my sites are ancient, and might not even exist anymore. For such sites, geocoding, even /open-source/ geocoding, would be flatly impossible.
>
>Temlakos
>
>jeroen De Dauw wrote:
>> Hey,
>> 
>> >Does either Maps or Semantic Maps provide a means by which to display a
>> map with a marker at a set of coordinates given in degrees, minutes, and
>> seconds?
>>  No, they do not support that notation. It would not be that hard to implement, but no one has asked for it before, so I guess the demand is pretty low.
>> Is simply geocoding the actual addresses with the build in #geocode parser function [0] not an option? That way you can avoid having to work with coordinates all together.
>> 
>> [0] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Maps#Geocoding
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Jeroen De Dauw
>>  Forum: code <http://code.bn2vs.com>.bn2vs.com <http://code.bn2vs.com>
>> Blog: blog.bn2vs.com <http://blog.bn2vs.com>
>> Skype: rts.bn.vs ; Xfire: bn2vs
>> 
>> Don't panic. Don't be evil.
>> 70 72 6F 67 72 61 6D 6D 69 6E 67 20 34 20 6C 69 66 65!
>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Temlakos <temlakos at gmail.com>
>> *To:* jeroen De Dauw <jeroen_dedauw at yahoo.com>
>> *Cc:* semediawiki-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; mediawiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> *Sent:* Sunday, August 23, 2009 3:18:19 AM
>> *Subject:* Re: [SMW-devel] Maps and Semantic Maps released
>> 
>> Dear Jeroen:
>> 
>> Does either Maps or Semantic Maps provide a means by which to display a
>> map with a marker at a set of coordinates given in degrees, minutes, and
>> seconds? All your examples for simple display of a single point use
>> floating-point degree quantities. This would force me to hand-convert,
>> and that seems rather pointless to me.
>> 
>> What I would like to do is design a template for a settlement, or a
>> landmark (e.g., mountain, hill, valley), that will include a map of the
>> immediate region and automatically place a marker at the specified
>> coordinates in the article on that settlement or landmark.
>> 
>> A query formatted as a map with many points on it looks great. And it
>> would be wonderful for an article on a country, because I could place
>> markers for every city and/or landmark in that country. But when I write
>> an article for a city or a mountain, I annotate coordinates in degrees,
>> minutes, and seconds. Or must I get used to specifying them in floats?
>> 
>> Temlakos
>> 
>> jeroen De Dauw wrote:
>> > Hey,
>> >
>> > First of all, let me introduce myself.
>> > I'm Jeroen De Dauw, one of the GSoC students for Wikimedia foundation
>> > this year. During the last 2 months I've been working on 2 new mapping
>> > extensions for MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki
>> > <http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki> [0] with Yaron
>> > Koren <http://yaronkoren.com/> [1] as mentor. You can read more about
>> > this at my blog <http://blog.bn2vs.com/tag/semantic-maps/> [2].
>> >
>> > The first version of both extensions has just been released. These are
>> > the extensions:
>> >
>> > Maps
>> > Maps <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Maps> [3] is an
>> > extension that provides the ability to display coordinate data, using
>> > multiple mapping services, including Google Maps [4], OpenLayers [5]
>> > and Yahoo Maps [6], and allows users to geocode addresses.
>> >
>> > Semantic Maps
>> > Semantic Maps <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Maps>
>> > [7] is an extension that adds semantic capabilities to the Maps
>> > extension, and therefore provides the ability to add, view and edit
>> > coordinate data stored through the Semantic MediaWiki extension, using
>> > multiple mapping services. These include Google Maps, OpenLayers and
>> > Yahoo Maps. Semantic Maps and Maps are based on Semantic Google Maps
>> > and Semantic Layers, and are meant to replace these extensions. For
>> > this extension to work, you need to have both Semantic MediaWiki and
>> > Maps installed.
>> >
>> > You can download both extensions via their documentation pages.
>> > Suggestions and feature requests are welcome.
>> >
>> > [0] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki
>> > [1] http://yaronkoren.com/
>> > [2] http://blog.bn2vs.com/tag/semantic-maps/
>> > [3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Maps
>> > [4] http://code.google.com/apis/maps/
>> > [5] http://openlayers.org/
>> > [6] http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/
>> > [7] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Maps
>> > > Cheers,
>> > De Dauw '[RTS]BN+VS*' Jeroen
>> > > Forum: code <http://code.bn2vs.com>.bn2vs.com <http://code.bn2vs.com>
>> > Blog: blog.bn2vs.com <http://blog.bn2vs.com>
>> > Xfire: bn2vs ; Skype: rts.bn.vs
>> >
>> > Don't panic. Don't be evil.
>> > 70 72 6F 67 72 61 6D 6D 69 6E 67 20 34 20 6C 69 66 65!
>> >
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/semediawiki-devel
>> > 
>> 
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Joel Natividad
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