Spud stuff: other survey software; and a few other bits.

[Olly Betts]

In message <00100923382301.00674@localhost.localdomain>, Philip Underwood write
s:
>On Mon, 09 Oct 2000, Mark SHinwell wrote:
>> - Has integration with GIS stuff like ArcView

I think integration with ArcView just needs shapefile output.  The shapefile
format is a bit strange, but there's a free (user's choice of LGPL or old
MIT style) library to read and write them:

http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/shapelib/shapelib.html

>>   can read standard
>>   DEM (Digital Elevation Map) files for terrain data.  We ought to do
>>   the latter (I will investigate).

>Yup -DEMs are definitely feasible. I've got some code knocking around 
>somewhere that does the job quite nicely. I've written some progs that will 
>convert dems into svx files (*huge* svx files), and also into 3dx files. I'll 
>dig them out if you want.

If they work we ought to put them on the web site for download.  For spud,
is it likely to be better to start from these, or go back to the original
code?

>It's based on someone elses code; its called g3DGMV 
>by Nick Yost (yostn@gte.net, available at (I think) freshmeat) I think this 
>would be an excellent example where a module would be useful.

Home page seems to be:

http://members.linuxstart.com/~g3DGMV/

Currently seems to be down, but Google has it cached:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:members.linuxstart.com/~g3DGMV/

Incidentally, if you do pull in code from elsewhere, be sure to make sure
the license is compatible with the GPL.  We probably ought to keep a central
list of such code, as we may want to track it and collect enhancements and
bug fixes.

>> - Context-sensitive help.  We need to think about how we will provide
>>   help.

>I like HTML - the user can specify their own browser, its easy to write, and 
>reasonably flexible. Under Win32 its very easy to set the help up to use the 
>default HTML browser automatically. Or possibly SGML, which is more general, 
>but is more tricky to include graphics.

Assuming you mean the docbook DTD, it's not trickier, just more verbose.
Here's an example from http://www.docbook.org/tdg/html/imageobject.html :

<!DOCTYPE mediaobject PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN">
<mediaobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="figures/eiffeltower.eps" format="eps">
</imageobject>
<imageobject>
<imagedata fileref="figures/eiffeltower.gif" format="gif">
</imageobject>
<textobject>
<phrase>The Eiffel Tower</phrase>
</textobject>
<caption>
<para>Designed by Gustave Eiffel in 1889, The Eiffel Tower is one of the
most widely recognized buildings in the world.
</para>
</caption>
</mediaobject>

Note you typically need to generate each graphic in several formats - gif or
png for a web page, eps for pdf or postscript output, etc.

The real benefit of using docbook is you can generate a nice printed version.
I believe you can also generate ms windows help files.

Cheers,
Olly