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current community chat Geographic Information Systems Geographic Information Systems Meta more communities Explore other Stack Exchange communities on stackexchange.com Stack Exchange This page is an archive of this blog, and is presented for historical purposes only. Another Look at GIS StackExchange 2013-09-13 by mapperz . 0 comments An update to last years Carving Up GIS StackExchange” now Another Look at GIS StackExchange” Compared to last year’s results, there hasn’t been much movement in the distribution of tags. One thing I did notice, however is that the tag qgis” leaped to the top of the list. Last year, arcgis” was the top tag and qgis” was number three. That said, I wouldn’t jump to too many conclusions. A quick look at the data shows that, in addition to arcgis”, there are version-specific tags such as arcgis-10.0” and arcgis-10.1” as well as product-specific tags like arcgis-server” so there’s a lot of Esri-centric discussion going on, but that is to be expected. The top ten tags, however, include major components of the OpenGeo Suite (OpenLayers, GeoServer, PostGIS) in addition to QGIS so open-source tools seem to be every bit as active a topic of discussion as do Esri tools. GIS StackExchange top ten tags: qgis (3910) arcgis (2382) python (2171) arcgis-10.0 (2142) openlayers (1996) postgis (1560) geoserver (1193) arcobjects (1184) raster (1174) arcmap (1113) Previous post [September 2012 ] http://blog.geomusings.com/2012/09/13/carving-up-gis-stackexchange/ New post [September 2013] Full Credit to Bill Dollins for the Blog and Analysis. http://blog.geomusings.com/2013/09/12/another-look-at-gis-stackexchange/ Filed under GIS Carving Up GIS StackExchange 2012-09-17 by mapperz . 8 comments GIS SE User Bill Dollins has written an interesting blog post about GIS Stack Exchange and using the GIS SE Tags and the Stack Exchange API V2.1 In Summary a very good overview of the GIS SE site: (pulling the information for the 100 most popular” tags, using the StackExchange API) Grouping of Tags Not all fell neatly into groups so I made a few judgement calls. For example, I threw tags about the Esri Flex API into Esri Tools” whereas Flex” went into Development/Programming.” For the full blog post on this please visit http://blog.geomusings.com/2012/09/13/carving-up-gis-stackexchange/ Thanks to Bill for his time and statistical analysis of GIS SE. Filed under GIS Why do questions get closed? 2012-01-27 by mapperz . 0 comments Good Question. There are a number of reason’s why GIS Stack Exchange Moderators close questions. The most likely is because the exact same question has already been answered. Please use the the search (top right) before posting new questions. Exact Duplicate This question covers exactly the same ground as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question.” A simple search on the GIS Stack Exchange site will find questions or related questions (most with answers already!) which speeds up the user having to wait for responses. Off Topic – questions are expected to generally relate to geographic information systems, within the scope defined in the FAQ. http://gis.stackexchange.com/faq GIS covers a large field of topics – but some can be better answered on other Stack Exchanges sites {{insert link/or list of sites}}. What to do if you disagree? post on meta , asking for clarification and the reasoning behind the closure, provide arguments for why in this particular instance should be okay ask again, providing more information, better wording. NOT Constructive This question is not a good fit to our QA format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. GIS SE likes Questions that can be answered – too many variables can delay or even be left unanswerable. NOT a real Question It’s difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. GIS SE Moderators can debate this one, sometimes it just takes a polite comment/message for the question being asked to contain more content or expand on details. Too Localized This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. Can be hard for some to to be generic enough for based on the question for a very local or remote location. Filed under GIS , Questions Calculation and Compilation in Arcmap 2011-11-07 by kirkkuykendall . 2 comments Who says a calculator can’t learn natural language ? So whatever happened to VBA in the Field Calculator? Before 10.0 I grew accustomed to using VBA to leverage all sorts of geometry related interfaces. With 10.0 Esri has replaced VBA with Python and VBScript. I’m not sure why support for .NET wasn’t added, considering that both the C# and VB.NET compilers are part of the standard .NET Framework installation. The .NET Framework provides modules that can compile source code and turn it into an assembly in memory. Maybe once ArcGIS supports .NET 4.0, I’ll adapt this proof-of-concept to use AvalonEdit . The Visual studio project files can be downloaded here . public CompilerResults Compile() { CodeDomProvider provider = CodeDomProvider.CreateProvider(m_Language); var parameters = new CompilerParameters(); parameters.GenerateInMemory = true; parameters.GenerateExecutable = false; foreach (string reference in m_References) { parameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(reference); } // var results = provider.CompileAssemblyFromSource(parameters,m_Source); if (results.Errors.Count == 0) { var type = results.CompiledAssembly.GetType(TYPENAME); if (type == null) throw new Exception("type not found: " + TYPENAME); object o = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as IKalkulation; if(o == null) throw new Exception("unable to createinstance"); m_kalkulation = o as IKalkulation; // if (m_kalkulation == null) throw new Exception("unable to cast to IKalkulation"); } return results; } That allows us take the dynamically generated class (that implements IKalkulation ) and loop through each row in a featurelayer (or standalone table) performing the calculation using C# code entered into a form. while ((row = cur.NextRow()) != null) { i++; var obj = this.m_kalkulation.Kalkulate(row); row.set_Value(idx,obj); row.Store(); //System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(300); use for testing cancellation int newPct = (int)((double)i * 100.0 / (double)total); if (newPct != pct) worker.ReportProgress(newPct); pct = newPct; if (this.CancellationPending) break; } GIS: Where are the Languages at? We spend a lot more time debating which general purpose language is better for GIS (C#, VB, Python, Java etc.) than we spend asking what GIS-specific languages should look like. Notice how the language choice is hidden by the compiler – it is an implementation detail . The job of the compiler is to convert human readable formal language expressions into machine language. In addition to general purpose languages like C#, VB.NET, etc., I think GIS deserves its own languages. Sure, we have the shape comparison language , but I think there is room for improvement. It should be possible to write codedom providers for things like rasters, topologies and networks. Raster Languages Esri once supported a product called ArcGRID which allowed several expressions (DOCELL, IF, and WHILE) that are no longer supported in Spatial Analyst. It would be possible for Esri to write a CodeDOM provider that would compile these expressions. Otherwise the same approach taken with the proof-of-concept could be adapted to work with pixels instead of IRows . Topology Languages Likewise, workstation ARC/INFO allowed one to easily find polylines where two...