Okay, the discussion seems to have died down a little, but a few more notes on the proposed Geo::GSHHS and similar modules.
James: GSHHS is "Global Self-consistant High-resolution Hierachical Shoreline data" -- it's basically a vector drawing of the world's coastlines, available at 5 resolutions, and published by the University of Hawaii. It's the standard shoreline data which is used by most GIS applications, but it's published in a network-endian binary data format, which makes it a little more difficult to read than the typical text files which Perl does so well. I've got a little module to use unpack() and read() and a bit of data-processing and data-structure to make a module out of it. GIS is "Geographic Information Systems", basically spacial data with an emphasis on mapping and the Earth. It's not necessarily a subset of digital imaging, because it might include vector or point data, and many other data sources other than photographic ones. Here's a better description: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIS Regarding the Sol::Earth::Geo discussion, there's no reason why many of the GIS tools should be planet-dependant; the conversions which require knowledge of the planet shape are typically only a small part of large systems, and I know that programs such as xplanet use the same functions to draw a mars image as an earth image. Regarding the geometry / geography discussion, I can see a few geometry modules living happily in Math::Geo, although I'd be happy to hear from anyone who thinks they should be elsewhere. Regarding the GIS:: namespace, one thing I might mention about that is that it won't show up on a search for "Geo", which might be quite confusing to someone who has used Geo::shapefiles and GeoIP, and is looking for something similar. "Geography::" WOULD show up on a Geo search, but is it better for me to locate new modules here rather than in Geo? I had thought that Geo:: looked like a standard place, until the Geography area was pointed out to me in this forum. Of course, there are many more suggestions. In Perl there's always more than one way to do something just as in English, there's always more than one way to describe something... Any more thoughts? No hurry, as I'm just plodding along with code slowly in my spare time. Regards Oliver White www.blibbleblobble.co.uk On Thursday 13 Nov 2003 2:26 am, James E Keenan wrote: > On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 20:22:01 +0000, Oliver White wrote: > > Hiya. I'm about to start work on some GIS programming in Perl, and > > will likely end up with a few modules that might usefully go onto > > CPAN. > > > >> From what I've read on the FAQs though, it seems like a bit of a > >> minefield to > > > > choose a name that someone else doesn't want, > > See below. > > > and to find out if > > anyone's already working in the same area. I did some searches on > > the CPAN website for likely modules, while the documentation > > suggests I ask on some mailing lists, which I presume includes this > > one? > > Yes, and possibly a post on comp.lang.perl.modules. But this list is > where the issues will be argued back and forth. > > > As a first step, I was considering adding a module to read GSHHS > > data [a binary format for coastline data] and give it a name > > something like Geo::GSHHS. More info at the site: > > http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhs/gshhs.html > > To help us understand the problem better, could you spell out 'GSHHS' > and 'GIS'? > > > Any comments? Is this the right place to ask? > > Yes, this is *definitely* the right place to ask. > > > Is there already > > code somewhere that does it? Would anyone be offended if I wrote > > the module? > > No one will take offense if you write the module, but (as you imply > above) our fellow module-authors are picky about the names of new > modules. > > One consideration here: In the last week or so, there has been > discussion on this list re the general appropriateness of the 'Geo' > namespace. It seems to be doing double-duty for both 'Geometry' and > 'Geography' and some are advocating putting geographic modules in the > 'Geography' namespace. I'm not sure where that discussion ended up; > check the archives or Google it. But you might want to wait for that > discussion to resolve before finalizing your own module's name. > > Jim Keenan
