[PLUG] GIS/Mapping Newbie - needs help.

John Todd jtodd at loligo.com
Tue Jun 10 17:46:02 UTC 2003


>I would like to find/make/customize an application that will allow me to enter
>multiple addresses in a city and have it generate an image that I can print.
>
>I'm looking for:
>1) Suggestions directly related to this.
>2) Email lists devoted to GIS/Mapping issues on Linux.
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>
>Scott

1)  You should investigate the Open-Source mapserv toolkit at 
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/

    I have installed this on several systems that my firm uses, and it 
works like a charm.  There's a firm in Maryland that sells Tiger 
datasets (the "raw data" files that contain the streets, zip, 
political boundaries, etc.) in ARC form for a reasonable figure, and 
he also has a Perl-based application that layers on top of mapserv 
that will do address-to-lat/lon mapping.  You can find them at:

mapsurf at midsouth.rr.com.
Silicon Mapping Solutions
http://www.siliconmapping.com/

As mentioned by others, mapserv runs on Linux, but will also run on 
almost any other UNIX-like operating system (I have it running on a 
handful of OpenBSD platforms.)


2) Google will help you with mailing lists.   :)

3) Nothing is free, especially mapping systems.  Despite the Open 
Source moniker, getting _quality_ data will cost you at least $2k for 
the whole project, excluding hardware.  If it's less, you win, but 
that's what you should bank on.  This is far less than commercial 
rights to any of the "professional" datasets out there, which are 
(for your purposes) just scrubbed Tiger datasets.

JT




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