Hey Jody, Glad you are starting to work on documentation for users.
The User's Manual (GEOTDOC on confluence) has seen almost no change from the prototype. The prototype included a first pass at the JTS geometry system which seems like enough to introduce the topic to the point that users can keep going themselves. My current step has been to learn and develop a coherent, comprehensive presentation of the georeferencing system. I've gotten very far into this: working through many revisions, developing an outline of geodesy for geotool developers, finding the extent of the module, finding the limitations of what's in the code base. I'm getting close to being able to turn my notes into text but still need to elucidate both the referencing factory system and the creation and use of coordinate operations. That work is also taking me into the rendering system to understand how georeferencing is thought of within that system, what the limits are of the rendering system and how it converts data into graphics. The entire subject is not small since it lies at the heart of why a GIS is different from a database management system and because the geotools coders have created such a rich and complex system. However, I'm getting close enough that I can imagine turning to writing in the near future which is why I raised the docbook/latex issue. With regards to format, another possibility just occurred to me which would be to use OpenOffice or Abiword either of which is free, powerfulm and easy for new commers. If we can figure out how to use revisions, any user could make changes with revisions turned on and send us the file. That may be worth looking into since the initial learning is much less intense than any of the other formats we consider. The basic structure in the User docs will follow the basic architectural structure of geotools as outlined in the prototype. This will be paralleled in the demo/ directory. I'm working on a QuickStart introduction, perhaps similar to your 'tour' idea, which creates a feature (`London) from scratch, grabs a shapefile, (will) grab a WFS data source, creates a style, (will) create a simple query, and throws the lot at a jmappane, (eventually) transformed into a mercator projection, and create higher resolution printable images. That seems like a nice initial tour--I've attached the code to a couple of recent emails. Within the demo/ directory, I would also like power demos for each subsystem so we would have demo/introduction demo/geometery demo/referencing demo/mappane demo/feature demo/query demo/catalog etc. each with one or more power demos. Ideally, I'd like these demos to have well commented, best practice approaches to their topics, to have the demos run as unit tests, and have each demo reflect written docs in the user manual. Yes, these code demos will be in the public domain because we would be comitted to having this be 'best practice' and hope that users will steal this approach rather than invent other more convoluted strategies. The wiki space has been cleaned up to the extent of reorganizing the tutorials and snippets into the same architectural structure of geotools and adding notes telling users they are on their own to figure out what is current and what's really old. My plan is to eventually steal as much material as I can from each existing text but making the whole thing much more systematic and comprehensive. The license of the text is less critical than who owns the licensing rights. Frank said he would look into defining the role of OSGEO more clearly with regards to content. For now, it seems best if we know exactly who owns what so they can formally transfer that ownership to OSGEO when they clear up their stance. So for now keep your work (c) Jody and we'll see if OSGEO ever answer, --adrian ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
