Specification:Geographic Report

From Gramps

Proposed report for displaying data on a map

Task Status
Specification draft alpha
Approval pending
Implementation v0.1


Introduction

This report generates output that can be displayed on a map. For now, the Google Earth application is chosen to display this information, and hence the report is available as a code generator for KML files, the datafiles understood by Google Earth.

The first aim is to display events given in GRAMPS on the map, using the latitude and longitude of the places in GRAMPS. The second aim is to function as a testbed on how to optimally display genealogy data on map, which should be useful if GRAMPS is ever extended with a map view.

Note: It has come to my attention via the Eastman blog that a specific genealogy application exists that does this type of datarepresentation: Family Atlas. I do not have this application, but looking at the screenshots, it appears that much of its functionality can be done in Google Earth also.

Example/Screenshot

Geographic export-google earth 00.jpg

Download developer version

version 0.1 can be found at: MapReport0_1.tar.gz. Read the INSTALL file for how to make it available in the Git version of GRAMPS.


Specification of the code generator

Code Sections

The report is saved to file. The sections contained should be the Document title and the Placemarks. Here, every placemark is a marker on the map.

Document Title

The document will be titled depending on the filter option:

  • If map data of a person is generated, the title will be "Events of the person<NAME>", where <NAME> is determined by the display settings of the program, using the unsorted display algorithm. This is typically "Firstname Lastname", but can be overriden by the Preferences settings.
  • If map data of the families of a person is generated, the title will be "Events of the family of <NAME>", where name is as before
  • If map data of a filter is generated, the title will be "Events in filter <filtername>"

Placemark Sections

TODO

Report Options

TODO

Future versions

v0.1 : basic functionality, events with the active person and with the family of the active person
v0.2 : adding filters, and display all that is in a filter. ???What type of filters to allow?
v0.3 : Using the date of the events: movie of the life of person ( (?? is this usefull? Will there be enough events to make this worthwile), plot out emigration paths of a family (Y-line / M-line)
v?.? : Map overlay. Google Earth allows to add polygons to the map, so in theory one could store a polygon map of a county, parish, as it used to be in eg 1741, and overlay it with the data seen in Google Earth. ( ?? Better place containers would be needed than available now, so that places can be grouped, eg town hall Ghent, church Ghent can be grouped in place Ghent). The goal would be to have a polygon attached to places outlining it's borders during several time periods. These could then be layers in Google Earth, like the boundary layers now. ( ?? I think I'm dreaming now...)

User Contributions

  • I have patched v0.1 to let me select any filter, not just two. It works for me this way, YMMV. It’s using some classes from Calender.py, included in 2.2.8 at least. See [1] for the changes I did. --Nomeata
  • I've done a partial rewrite, added some features and removed others. Added: filters, date support, customizable title, address without lon/lat (works great in Google Earth). Removed: family events (planned to include with person events), place merging. See [2], note that I renamed eventFammar.(png|svg) to eventmarriage.(png|svg) --WvEngen

Links to other genealogy with google earth

  • gcensus: with perl source code: CPAN.
  • Marble is a Virtual Globe and World Atlas that you can use to learn more about Earth: You can pan and zoom around and you can look up places and roads. A mouse click on a place label will provide the respective Wikipedia article.