Thanks - lots of useful info there.

The big issue in this approach is (as you say)
  I would
think it would be relatively simple to define a procedure (less simple
to have the kids actually follow it) where the kids send you an email
In my case, I have a large number of addresses to define (say, 500) and a small number of volunteers (say 2 or 3) - so I'm not able to distribute the initial data gathering very well. The level of manual effort involved in copy/paste URL, type name, type address would be OK for each Scout doing one of them - but asking my volunteers to do a couple of hundred each is, um, challenging :-)

Also, I do have the addresses already collected - so I am hoping to import that into Google maps (or other mapping system) ready for some human interaction to define where each on is - and ideally to then require only one click (or equivalent) to capture enough info for me to process it.

A kmz file might be usable - but I'd need to generate it on the fly, because I want to only show one (or at most a handful) of addresses - there's already a lot of local concern about putting anything like this on the internet.

Currently I have system (LC + revBrowser) working to define locations, though I'd like to make it a bit smarter. And a (very) initial display system - see https://www.kilmelford.com/igniter.lc/basic/findaddress (good examples to try for the search string are "glen", or "cuil" or "cuil cottage" or ....

This might work for me because one of my volunteers has access to a high-definition map of part of the area, with house names already shown; but for the other part I will probably need to do the GPS app for phone/tablet and have them walk/cycle around.

So - off to experiment with kmz files ... thanks !!
-- Alex.


On 11/04/2017 00:12, Kay C Lan via use-livecode wrote:
On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode
<use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
I'm looking for any help or suggestions for existing apps that can do
(something like) what I want to do - could even be a clever way to use a
feature I've not found in Google maps, or pple maps, or ...

Hi Alex, I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to achieve but here
is a scenario that might address some of your needs:

You have a local Scout group and you want all the children in the
group to know where all the other kids and group leaders live so you
want to produce a map with place markers that can be easily shared.

So I'd get all the kids to go home, get onto Google Maps and find
their own home using Street View. Once they've found their home, they
take a copy of the URL and have them email it to you. The entire URL
will look like this:

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@52.7810059,-1.7254772,3a,75y,38.54h,87.5t,358.22r/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNB14D3D9SvOQvL8Efe9h8w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

The format is pretty straight forward to decipher, the two numbers
directly after the @ is the latitude and longitude. It would be easy
to write an LC utility to strip the address to just the Lat and Long.

Take this Lat and Long and paste it into Google Earth. Note I started
out in "Maps" because of Street View - it is much easier to find your
own home in Maps vs Earth. Obviously pasting the Lat Long into Earth
will take you to exactly the same spot. In Earth you can then place
multiple 'Placemarkers' and give them appropriate names and
descriptions - that are like pop up tooltips. I'd name the
Placemarkers after the kid's name, and for the description enter their
proper address.

Once you've entered all the Placemarker details, you can scale your
view to cover just the area that includes all your Placemarkers. You
can then save this as a .kmz file and send it out to everyone. When
anyone opens the file they'll see exactly what you saw when you saved
it; but it doesn't preclude them from zooming in and out or panning
around.

Google Earth is available on all the popular desktop and mobile OSes
and is free.

Lastly, .kmz files are basically an xml file as defined by Google.
Again the format is pretty simple to decipher - or you could look it
up on the internet and have it precisely described to you. I would
think it would be relatively simple to define a procedure (less simple
to have the kids actually follow it) where the kids send you an email
with the body is in a format like:

URL: qerpoqueoruqweouqeoruqoru
Your fullname: oiu lh mnbmb
Your Full address: 765 hohjjkl jhgjgh ouyiuy UYT 432 FHG

and then have LC read the email, extract the relevant data and then
automatically add the Placemarker data into the .kmz file. One problem
I see is that someone might join who lives outside the original zoomed
level of your custom kmz map so with each update to the kmz file you
would have to actually open it and look at it in Google Earth and
determine that the zoom level is correct to ensure that everyone is
still within the bounds of display; before saving the file and sending
it out as an update to everyone.

Also, Google Earth allows you to create your own 'Tracks' that can be
saved and shared. So for instance, you could save a Scout hiking trip
and share it and so parents would know where to drop kids off and pick
them up, and theoretically the kids can't get too lost on the route in
between;-)

HTH

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