uDig 1.4.0 on Osgeo4W + BeeGIS and the Nettools (and java 7) + 32/64bit

I have been made aware of the fact that java is outdated on Osgeo4W and that I am the maintainer. So I checked into it and noticed that I never upgraded uDig to 1.4.0 (and of which I know I am the maintainer).

Also I was told that the Nettools didn't work very well and even BeeGIS!!!

So I took the time to do a huge upgrade of everything and and very important: also added the 64 bit versions for Osgeo4W. This is almost mandatory for those that do raster data processing with uDig.

So pick your software: 32bit installer or 64bit installer.

Enjoy!!! :-)








 

uDig 1.3.1 now in Osgeo4W

We have tested the latest uDig 1.3.1 for a little while now and it is working nice!

It was time to update the version on the osgeo for windows installer.

We have tested it also with the BeeGIS and Nettools plugins.


As usual, to get it, just run the installer here.

This amazing Geo2011 has come to an end. Welcoming Geo2012!

It has been a while I didn't write here, but we have been very busy in bringing it on with our community projects.

Thanks to Lisasoft and the restless Jody Garnett uDig got a whole pile of new features and will be growing nicely over the next year.

Thanks to us, we now finally have a stable Spatial Toolbox in uDig, which for now bases on the JGrasstools project, but is extensible through the OMS3 model linking technology.

Also the cooperation we had with the Colorado State University and the USDA on OMS3 has been amazing and could be summarized in this presentation.

Also on the mobile side a lot has been going on. In the last months Geopaparazzi could welcome a new contributor, Luca Delucchi, which is an active member of the Openstreetmap community. Sharing a train travel together when returning from the Italian GFOSS conference, it happened that we lost the train and started to talk about how we could make geopaparazzi a better tool for OSM members. Well, we didn't just talk and sure thing one of the most important features that will get out with geopaparazzi 2.6 (we are testing those right now) is the support for OSM points.

The map view now presents an OSM logo handle on the right side, and when opened it shows the supported OSM categories:

By selecting a category you gain access to the supported tags:

The tags description generates the form:

Once the form is saved the OSM point is in the database.

The OSM points can then be synchronized with the online OSM account of the user. I really have been waiting for that a long while :)

Another small addition is the enhancement of the profile view for gps logs, which now supports real charting and zooming as well as zoom to selection:

A more complete story about geopaparazzi can be found here.

It has been also a great year for our enigneering company, which lead as side product from a cooperation with the university of Trento to the release of the Nettools. I recently gave a presentation about how we use the nettools, so I will leave it to this post and that presentation.

That has more or less been my Geo2011. A great year. I wish you all an even more amazing geo2012. See you around the world, being it in Trieste, Prague or Beijing.

NetTools 1.0.0 in Osgeo4W flush

We have been working on the nettools for udig a while now. The aim is to have tools to handle water supply systems and stromwater networks.

Well the first part is out. Epanet inside uDig for water supply systems.

It gives the possibility to create networks inside the GIS



And has wizards to run simulations



It has also been used in developing countries already, for planning and training purposes



Guess what is missing as usual? The manual... I really hope someone gets that one done. Downside is that for now the tools have to be used by trying them and asking for help in the udig mailinglist.

For now the nettools are available in the Osgeo4W installer.

osgeo4w for impaired networks

There has been some discussion going on about the osgeo download server (http://download.osgeo.org) being not reachable from certain networks (for example Italy's main provider Telecom, but also providers from other countries). This also means that the osgeo4w installer is not working right now, even if there is a mirror server (http://download2.osgeo.org) available that would be reachable from those networks (at least the Italian one).

Thanks to Matt Wilkie, there is now a tested (not as my recent desperate failures) way to get to update the osgeo4w packages. It is a bit less userfriendly, since commandline based, but I am sure many will appreciate. I did. Thanks Matt, also for the following instructions!

First some definitions:

%OSGEO4W_ROOT% refers to the installation folder of osgeo4w. In my case the folder is C:\OSGeo4W, which is the default.

Instructions:

1) download the file: apt.py
and save it to %OSGEO4W_ROOT%\bin\apt.py. If the file already exist, you can skip this step.

2) Create in the same folder as 1) a file named apt.bat, which contains the following line:
@python "%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\bin\apt.py" %*

3) Open the Osgeo4w command shell (it can be found in the program menu under osgeo4w) and inside that run the commands:

3.1) To update the list of packages:
apt --mirror=http://download2.osgeo.org/osgeo4w update

3.2) To get the list of available packages:
apt --mirror=http://download2.osgeo.org/osgeo4w available

3.3) To install a package:
apt --mirror=http://download2.osgeo.org/osgeo4w packagename


Full command options: http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-apt


I really hope that can help someone to get its preferred osgeo4w application until the eembargo is over.


PS: the --mirror instruction is necessary only in the first command run

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

TROUBLESHOOTING

There might be a couple of problems:
1) python is not installed in your osgeo4w installation (WHAT, NO PYTHON!!!!!???? Where do you live!?!?!? In a java world!??!?! :) ). In that case you will have to install it and then change the apt.bat to refer to your python installation.
In my case I had a python installation on my pc, but non in the osgeo4w installation, so I changed the apt.bat file to be:
C:\Python27\python "%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\bin\apt.py" %*
After that everything worked flawless.

Another option is the http://code.google.com/p/maphew/wiki/OsgeoFromScratch documentation.


2) If the apt update didn't work, try first to run:
apt --mirror=http://download2.osgeo.org/osgeo4w setup

I can't remember if I ran it or not and now it is too late to tell if that did unlock anythig in the begin.

BeeGIS in osgeo4w

As promised we now have also BeeGIS coming with the osgeo for windows installer.

Again, want to try it out? Just run the installer here and search for BeeGIS in the advanced install. The BeeGIS extentions will appear in the uDig istallation.