Geo-Representations of Plone Content

GeoRSS, KML, GML, etc.

Present

The PleiadesGeocoder currently provides Geo-Atom and KML views of folderish objects. It's not bad, but is slow, and provides no clustering or region (KML speak) capabilities.

Overview

Here's a table of features we need

            GeoRSS        KML
------------------------------------------------------
Usage:      Syndication   Visualization in Google Earth
                          Spatial indexing

Count:      Last N items  All items

Clustering: None          Regions
     

In words

GeoRSS: RSS feeds of our entities are essential. Participants can monitor changes using a conventional news reader, and GeoRSS will allow them to see changes to Pleiades in the context of other spatial data using geographically-aware readers.

KML: By generating KML representations of our entities, it will be possible to visualize them using Google Earth and other compatible applications. In addition, the googlebot will use KML to spatial index our entities.

Since we'll eventually have 50,000 or more entities in Pleiades (places + roads connecting many of them), the capability to throttle the RSS feeds or KML documents will be very important. Our feeds could contain the N (20-30) most recent updates. Our KML documents may leverage regions and network links (http://earth.google.com/kml/kml_21tutorial.html#regionbasednl) so that users are not overwhelmed with data at small scales.