GPX and KML are interesting and open. These formats are quite commonly used during data collection through GPS devices. GPX can represent waypoints, tracks and routes efficiently. When it comes to complex geometry like polygon and multi-polygons, GPX is not preferred. KML can take care of these geometries but I've always found it difficult to deal with KML as a form of geospatial information exchange. Plus, KML was introduced to work entirely with Google Earth and their upward geospatial stack. I'm not quite sure whether we would want to endorse them.
Shapefiles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefiles) are extremely efficient and widely used, but ESRI has a handle on them and they can flip the switch to make it a closed standard any day (hopefully not). If we are ignoring this, I would highly recommend Shapefiles. In fact, Riju and I spoke about this briefly yesterday and we think the Geographic Markup Language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_Markup_Language) is a good choice. It was developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Geospatial_Consortium) and is widely recognised as an information exchange format. The GDAL OGR (http://www.gdal.org/ogr/) library can help you deal with it in whatever ways you want. Moving to a web paradigm, I prefer GeoJSON over anything. http://geojson.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoJSON. They are fast, simple. Extended from JSON. Modern maps libraries can easily store and represent GeoJSON. My preference will go like this: 1. Shapefiles 2. Geographic Markup Language 3. GeoJSON 4. KML. Cheers, Sajjad. On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Thejesh GN <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi All, > Team Data.Gov.In wants suggestions for GIS Open Data Formats. They would > like to use some of those formats to publish GIS data on Data.Gov.In > website. Please do send your suggestions by replying to this chain. > > > Mine: > GPX - GPS eXchange Format > - Its an OpenFormat > - Wiki : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_eXchange_Format > - http://www.topografix.com/gpx.asp > > KML > - Started by Google > - But it became an Open Standard > http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/857 > - Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language > > There are many more listed here. Not sure how many of them makes sense in > this context . > > > > > Thej > -- > Thejesh GN | ತೇಜೇಶ್ ಜಿ.ಎನ್ > http://thejeshgn.com > GPG ID : 0xBFFC8DD3C06DD6B0 > > -- > For more details about this list > http://datameet.org/discussions/ > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "datameet" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- Sajjad Anwar | W: http://sajjad.in | T: @geohacker -- For more details about this list http://datameet.org/discussions/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "datameet" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
