Hi Stefan!
Have you read about geonames? I think it could help in some ways to make a
QGIS plugin or standalone application. See here for more information about
geonames project (http://www.geonames.org/about.html). The geonames
database contains some useful informations regarding your needs: name,
latitude, longitude, and fcode (see here for the list of fcode
http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html). For example, fcode could be
ADM1 (first-order administrative division e.g a state or province), ADM2
(second-order administrative division e.g city). Having that informations,
what you can do is to:
1. Download all countries geonames offline from here
http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/
2. Convert the .txt files into sqlite database. The step 1 and step 2
should be done outside of the apps (could be run as a background service as
the geonames is also updated per day)
3. Load the maps into QGIS, let the plugin divide the maps into set of
squares, for each square query to geonames database to get all the rows
that have latitude and longitude inside the square. The last part is to
restructure the returned rows into useful information with the fcode
(mapping the fcode into some useful informations - e.g what city or what
state it is). And as some administrative boundaries could exist inside the
square, it's possible to have more than 1 administrative region in a square
though.
That is a really rough idea, I hope I get your idea correctly.
Regards
On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 11:20 PM, Štefan Kiss stefan.k...@nextra.sk wrote:
Hi eweryone!
I am not a developer but I have a question or the appeal to developers
of qgis or qgis plugins.
My name is Stefan and I am from Slovakia. I am a blind user of computer.
I am using a screenreader which reads me a text from screen. So I cann work
with texts, e-mail, webpages or sounds but no with pictures and maps. But I
am interested in geography and for a long time I am searching some
possibility how could the blind browse the maps. I would like to know how
the world looks, which countryes are around my country etc. I think that
the sole possibility for blind is a reverse geocoding when I types some
gps coordinates and the application or webservice returns me the
information about locality. I used a Nominatim service for this point, and
it was great to see which countryes are below my slovakia (when I step by
step typed to Nominatim the 48,18 coordinates and then went to south by
decrementing the latitude from 48 to 45, 40 to 0). But Nominatim is not
reliable source of informations because Nominatim has not implemented a
seas and oceans as areas. So when I typed some coordinates for example on
Adriatic sea, Nominatim returns the nearest city or country and the result
was uncorrect for me.
I am little programming in Delphi and I tried to parse an osm files
(openstreetmaps). I cann read the informations about nodes or acquire all
tags of nodes but I am not able to draw the areas which are in osm files
represented as relations.
Now I found Qgis, I installed it and inported the osm file with map of
my country (Slovakia) to Qgis. I am blind so I cann not work with wievs or
graphs. But I would like create my own sqlite database with informations
about cityes and countryes as a map for me as blind. My idea is that I
split the inported map to little virtual squares by 0.01x0.01 and to each
square add an information about country and city. Then will be very simple
for me to browse a map with left right up and down arrowkey because when I
will to increment or decrement latitude or longitude, the application will
search the relevant square in database and tell me where I am on the map.
Dear developers, please, it would be possible create some plugin for
Qgis which browses the inported map from west to east and from north to
south step by step and on each 0.01x0.01 square detects inside which
polygons is this square situated? For example - I download from openstreet
webpage the map of Slovakia, inport it to Qgis and run the plugin. The
slovakia.osm file contains informations for rectangle
bounds minlat=47.72 minlon=16.82 maxlat=49.62 maxlon=22.570/
there are 190 lines and 575 columns it gives
cca 11 squares together. The plugin creates a sqlite database and
writes the informations about each square to them. I dont need the
addresses housenumbers or other points. Only countryes, cityes or other
polygons are interesant for me. After this conversion I could browse the
map in the simple application in which I could increment and decrement
latitude and longitude by left right up and down arrow and the application
could search in database the relevant information and tell me where I am.
With so plugin I could convert more countryes and I could to have a special
map for blind.
Please is this my idea very fantastic or would it possible to make?
PS: I searched also
