dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mapshaper now comes in a completely new implementation and interface, and
can also produce javascript formats directly.
https://github.com/mbloch/mapshaper#mapshaper

Furthermore, since it is now implemented in javascript and open sourced, it
should be possibly to achieve closer integration with DHIS.

I think this opens up a number of possibilities:

1) Most importantly, it should allow a radical simplification of the
current laborious process for getting polygon coordinates into DHIS2:
http://www.dhis2.org/doc/snapshot/en/user/html/ch18s02.html

2) Beyond this, it could allow users to construct the whole hierarchy,
replete with GIS by simply uploading well-structured shapefiles

3) It would also make it possible to preserve the original shapes in full
detail, while allowing users to choose the degree of simplification -
though probably limited to superusers to allow for efficient caching. But a
web service could then provide a different degree of simplification than
that exposes in the GIS module to accommodate slow connections.

Perhaps this would serve well as a Master's project? Much of this could be
suitable for the new App framework? Of course, preserving shapefile
coordinates in full detail would probably require some changes to the core
model.

Suggestion 2) above of course relates to the larger issue of metadata
import from existing source formats such as Excel. There is currently
exciting work being done on this front as well, again probably resulting in
an App in it's first iteration.

-- 
Knut Staring
Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo
+4791880522
http://dhis2.org