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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: visualisation of postal codes in marble shape via plugin?
From:       "Simon Schmeisser" <mail_to_wrt () gmx ! de>
Date:       2008-09-25 21:19:50
Message-ID: 20080925211950.247030 () gmx ! net
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Hi guys,

so to keep it short, yes you will need to fiddle around a little bit with your \
system. The marble flake shape ( or geoshape as I call it, lacking a better name) \
depends on koffice 2.0 alpha 9 or so and marble from trunk from about a month ago. \
It's not more up to date because I was on a bike tour for the last month. ( crossing \
the alps). So maybe next week I will manage to update it to work with the trunk \
versions of marble and koffice 2. But I also need to pack stuff for moving across \
Germany for studies, so my time is very limited. Afterwards I won't have internet for \
some weeks, so no updates then as well.

Anyway, here comes a short list of what it currently CAN do:
- display a map
- save the position, the zoom and the orientation
- load that
- navigate around with the toolbox
- undo for navigating
- search for a certain place ( no undo yet )
- save a fallback-image as well, which will get displayed in OpenOffice and others. \
(OpenOffice will only save the image, so don't use OpenOffice to edit files with maps \
in them if you ever want to change them again)

So there's not really support for displaying placemarks/dots whatever on them map. \
Except for a trick:

1. Go to the marble data folder
2. copy the map you want to use to a new directory
3. change the maps name and stuff in the .dgml file
4. create a .kml file with your coordinates in it. (have a look at the cities.kml \
file for example) 5. add this .kml file in your dgml file
6. in the marble flake shape select your new dgml file as map.
7. done

It's a hack, but it's the only thing that is currently working that i can offer

long term goal is of course to support this kind of workflow.
My next goal besides fixing some bugs and keeping it up to date is to allow to \
include a .kml file in the .odt/odp/od... and to display that. It will require some \
work on marble as well, so don't expect it too soon

Also one could write a marble plugin, which takes it's data from some \
spreadsheet-like stuff, which is propably what you are thinking of. Also Kross \
integration would be cool, but that's all very long-term goals.

So there you go, now you know about as much about the current situation of the marble \
flake shape as I do, and since I'm its creator that should be about everything.

Regards
Simon

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 13:05:50 +0200
> Von: Johannes Simon <johannes.simon@gmail.com>
> An: "For developer\'s discussion about KOffice" <koffice-devel@kde.org>
> CC: Stephan Wassipaul <wassipaul@gmx.at>
> Betreff: Re: visualisation of postal codes in marble shape via plugin?

> Hi Stephan,
> 
> I think that's even something the marble shape should support
> out-of-the-box. 
> Essentially, you want to create a diagram. Your spreadsheet contains the 
> labels and the values for the points on the diagram. The only difference
> is 
> that you don't use the chart shape to visualize your data, but the marble 
> shape. Ideally, their behavior should be as similar as possible when fed
> with 
> a data source. It could automatically determine if your data for the
> points on 
> the map is coordinates or zip codes, a really simple and quick algorithm
> could 
> do that.
> 
> On the technical side, it could ask you if you permanently want to
> download 
> the zip code -> coordinate database. That depends on how much storage
> would be 
> needed, and how good it could be downloaded separately, depending on the 
> regions you need.
> 
> I'm really interested in what the marble shape author and our marble co-
> maintainer (yeah, that's you Inge ;) think about this.
> 
> Regards,
> - Joh
> 
> On Wednesday 03 September 2008 17:04:44 Stephan Wassipaul wrote:
> > Hey,
> > 
> > I'd like to visualize (austrian) postal codes (which are stored in a
> spread
> > sheet) on a map. So after some googling and finding out that I'd
> probably
> > need to convert them to coordinates (which should be possible using the
> > database from http://opengeodb.hoppe-media.com/index.php?FrontPage,
> > although the site looks kind of outdated...), the koffice marble flake
> came
> > to my mind. Ideally, I'd like to select a column of names, a column of
> > phone numbers and a column of postal codes and then just run plugins ->
> > visualise on a map. Now my question ist the following: Would it be
> possible
> > to achieve my goal by writing a plugin taking advantge of the koffice
> > architecture?
> > 
> > If so, what exactly would be needed (sorry, I know the koffice
> architecture
> > only from blog posts) and which programming language could I use?
> > 
> > The problem is that I'm not a real programmer, only familiar with python
> > (and a little bit php), but I could probably learn an other programming
> > language pretty quickly as long as it's a scripting language. If the
> above
> > is only doable using a non-scripting language, it won't be worth the
> effort
> > (it's nothing really urgent, only nice to have), so that's why I'm
> asking
> > here before digging deeper into the documentation... Also, I'm using
> > Kubuntu 8.04 (still the KDE 3 version), so getting the current alpha up
> and
> > running would be quite an effort (at least for me, I only switched to
> linux
> > about a year ago, never compiled anything, never altered my
> > /etc/apt/sources.list etc.), so I'd like to be sure that what I'm
> striving
> > for is doable...
> > 
> > If something of the above is unclear (which is easily possible since
> > english is not my native language) or if you need further informations
> in
> > order to be able to answer my question, please don't hesitate to contact
> me
> > - I promise I'll write back as soon as possible.
> > 
> > Thank you very much in advance for your efforts and for doing an
> impressive
> > job on coding koffice!
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Stephan Wassipaul
> > 
> > PS: In case you're wondering why I'd want to do that: I'm a volunteer of
> > AFS which is non-profit organization organising student exchanges. Being
> > able to visualize postal codes would be handy for all kinds of things,
> e.g.
> > when you need to find volunteers living close to a certain host
> family...
> > (we assert a volunteer - serving as a contact person - to every exchange
> > student).
> 
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