[Geowanking]Portable Geo Format?

Mon May 5 18:45:51 PDT 2003

Hey, included below is info on what GPSter/Geographiti/Geoclient 
(www.gpster.net) has been using for the last year, but we'd love to 
support some more point formats.   Here's some thoughts from dinner 
relating this to our peered geolocation servers studies: what I'm 
thinking about here is a protocol  that all geocoding 
applications/servers can support.

1)request points
2)submit points
3)request alternate db list
4)submit alternate db
5)request format/request format list

1 and 2 are already supported by geoURL and GPSter and others, but not 
in a defined 'PGF'; everyone has their own style.

3-4 are functions so that a client application can scour multiple 
geolocation search/databases and find points from any database they are 
aware of.  (see http://www.gpster.net/gipss.html)

5 would be largely unnecessary if there was a 'PGF' but even with the 
addition there's still probably a dozen similar solutions so far.  It 
would be nice to have the potential for format negotiation built in.

and you'll probably want to include some db authentication bits to 
support access control.

As for fields in the PGF, has a cron/expiry/valid_from_until date idea 
been kicked around?  Cron is a nice model for periodic scheduling. 
Expiry date or some validity tag is essential, at least from our point 
of view.  Looking at the geoNotes client usage example, there was a lot 
of chatter without relevance outside the context of the instant.

"GPSterML" waypoint format 1.0 08/2002 (although it spits out whatever 
you ask it to.  If I remember correctly, geoclient submits requests with 
this format too.  (excerpted from http://www.gpster.net/whitepaper.html)

Otherwise, here's what the  db portal url looks like, although there's 
probably a lot of parameters that aren't listed here, like the brush 
rangetype (range in km vs range explicitly defined by corners).
http://www.gpster.net/db/search.cgi?query=beach&rangetype=[radius|brush]&DLongitude=-00.000000&DLatitude=-000.0000000&LaNS=N&NMEALat=DDMM.MMM&LoEW=W&NMEALong=DDDMM.MMM&range=10&results=[all|0..]&format=[html|PMGNWPL|NMEA|XML]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Shift_JIS" ?>
<!DOCTYPE gpsterml PUBLIC "-//MOSTEC//GPSTERML V1.0//EN"
"http://www.gpster.net/gpster.dtd">
<gpsterml version="1.0">
<head>
         <query>banff</query>
         <rangetype>radius</rangetype>
         <qusername>karlis</qusername>
         <qlat></qlat>
         <qlong></qlong>
         <qlatb></qlatb>
         <qlongb></qlongb>
         <qrange>100</qrange>
         <results>1</results>
         <geodetic-system>WGS-84</geodetic-system>
</head>
<body>
     <point>
                 <name>Donald Cameron Hall, Dining Room</name>
                 <content>Massive feasts for the artists at the Banff 
center, desserts galore.</content>
		<username></username>
                 <latitude>51.172183</latitude>
                 <longitude>-115.562300</longitude>
                 <altitude>000000.0</altitude>
                  <category></category>
                  <url></url>
                  <date>2002-07-16</date>
    </point>
  </body>
</gpsterml>

--------------------------------

ok I hope that's interesting

cheers
karlis