April '16 Meetup Minutes

Covered topics:

• PSQGIS organizational Issues
• Web mapping with QGIS
• Future goals

Organizational Issues

• Peter Keum suggested we discontinue dues on Meetup.com but collect money in person.
• Peter also suggested we set aside time to discuss topics for meetings.

Web Mapping - The Group

• Stu Smith lead a group exploration of the qgis2web plugin.
  • His map had a Google terrain basemap and a point layer of orca whale sitings.
  • The plugin can publish as OpenLayers 3 or Leaflet
    • Evan Derickson explained:
      • The OpenLayers framework came first and has tons of features.
      • The Leaflet framework came later and is designed to get most of the features while using fewer resources. Leaflet feels snappier.
  • Run the Plugin from the Web menu.
    • Select the layers that you want to include.
    • It Doesn’t seem like the Google basemap will work as it doesn’t show up in the preview window.
    • There are other basemaps to choose from. You can select multiple basemaps and the web page will let the user choose among them.
    • Select an output folder.
    • “Mapping library location”:
      • Choose local if you want to have the library locally or choose CDN if you want to get the library from the project web site.
      • CDN may result in a faster loading page, due to superior web host qualities and if the user is using the same library from multiple sites it may be pre-cached.
    • There are lots of map elements to choose from.
    • Leaflet has a always displayed legend and OpenLayers 3 has a rollover pop-up legend.
    • Export sends the files needed to host your map to the directory you’ve selected.
    • Leaflet has a bug, and requires the use of a transparent border for rendering polygons without visible borders. Not drawing the border at all prevents the map files from being created.
    • Creates the data as a javascript snipit not exactly a geojson file
  • Other plugins
    • QGIS Cloud Plugin’s website acts as your host. 65 Euros/month
    • Lizmap’s pricing is in French. It might start at 45 Euros.

PSQGIS’s Plans for the future:

• Document an entire work flow from OSM data to a finished product.
• Create a translation guide from ESRI ArcMap to QGIS.
• Reach out to students and non-profits.

Suggestions for next month:

• Clifford Snow will go through different ways to extract OSM data.
  • Use Overpass to get real time data for specific tags.
• Stu Smith will demo Time Manager Plugin