Web Mapping Illustrated

The Tools in This Book

The tools in this book are the results of a handful of open source projects. They are a critical set of tools in my professional data management toolbox. From visualizing map data to converting between formats, I have come to depend on many of them daily. They are also an important part of my future goals for mapping and data management.

These tools are a subset of what is available today, both in the mainstream commercial market and in the open source realm. Because these are open source, they are free for you to use and adopt as you see fit. Many of them are pushing the envelope of what even the commercial products can do.

I began using many of these tools shortly after finishing university. My day job was in mapping and geospatial data analysis, and I had access to some of the latest commercial tools. However, when I wanted to pursue projects at home on my own time, the traditional tools were simply not available. The licensing restrictions and costs forced me to find alternatives; eventually, the open source tools took over. Any gaps in my array of tools will likely be filled within a year of this book being published.

There is a lot of active development going on across the spectrum of open source mapping and GIS projects. Many projects use the latest open standards for interoperability and tend to implement them much faster than the commercial products.

My initial motivation for writing was to fill in the gaps of existing documentation and answer the new ...