Geographic view

Ideas
#1

Just been catching up on the new developments for Geographic view and wondered whether any improvements to the markers have been envisaged. For example, configuring them to link into the genealogical symbol capability.

When multiple event types are displayed the red pin markers are very confusing. It seems a start was made as the small death pin has a dash in the head and marriage has a cross, but that’s all. These latter pins are probably a too small and easily get swamped by the red pins or lost in the default map icons.

It would also be useful if custom icons could be included.

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#2

It is unfortunate that both are those markers are actually magnifying glass icons (zoom in & zoom out) as alternatives to color-coded pushpins. So the map layer isn’t rendering glyphs, it is rendering objects.

When the subject came up in another thread, I tried to look into the history of traditional table maps and their real-world markers. (Like Napoleon’s fancy chess-piece-style markers, the Stratego game sets, WWII war room boards, etc.) I was also trying to remember the name of the BBC history programme where the host would open a table map and an animated map would be post-processed in.

This Tableau blog entry has an interesting discussion of how their map markers can be offset. (With a video associated.)

#3

Interesting item:
Geoapify : Map Marker Icons generator

#4

Red markers are for non free maps (google maps, …)
Green markers are for free maps (openstreetmap, …)

When you are on the events map, You have a “+” for birth, a “-” for death and a “x” for marriage.
If you have a mixed events for a marker, you have the green or red marker.
I can’t do more for that.

This application is for genealogy. This is not a game. I think this development would be used for a very small quantity of users. We have many others things to do before that.

#5

Serious? you answer a feature request with “… this is not a game”???

You really, really want to chase new users away, do you?

I agree that it’s not an important feature, but…

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#6

I have used Tableau in the past to organise and display genealogical events on maps. The challenge was always maintaining consistency between the underlying data sets (source & destination) and availability of suitable maps. I ended up using MyMaps feature of Google maps.

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#7

???
I can only assume your latter comment was addressed to emolution - at no time have I indicated I wanted to play games with GRAMPS.

I do not know the underlying mechanism of Geographic view, but had assumed that the features were similar to those I had used in MyMaps, where I could create an icon and use it as a marker in place of the default ones.

If there is a programmatical restriction, OK.

In that case, could the data set underlying the view be easily exported?

#8

For the moment, I think it don’t need to be modified.

But in the future, if we can associate a symbol or an icon/marker to an event, the deal will change.
In this case, we will be able to have geography themes (add, remove and select)
Each theme will have many icons:
birth (catholic, jewish, muslim, …)
death (catholic, jewish, muslim, …)
marriages(engagement, marriage, divorce, …)
school(diploma, …)
military (naval, air force, submarines, infantry, …)

We will have a default theme and if the icon/marker doesn’t exist for one theme, we will use the default icon theme.

For the moment, we are working on places. When we think it was stable enough, maybe the next step will be to change events.
It will need a database schema change.

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#9

I just thought it was interesting to see how someone else gave direct access to map Marker editing. I’m not suggesting that they do markers better.

The Tableau glyph markers lack the precision of an obvious hotspot/tackpoint. Thus, they seem to be only vaguely related to the geography. The markers for Gramps are much better in that aspect.

And the rollover hints that reveal the data driving the markers is brilliant. (Although Tableaus option to marquee-select a group of markers and export that data to an editable table is very cool.)

#10

If you go into the Places view and use a custom filter to duplicate what you had selected in the Geography view, then you can export the contents of the Places view to a csv file.

#11

I was just using the options from the Graphic view menu to display the data, based on the person selected in the default person view.
I’ll give what you suggest a whirl, but I haven’t played with filters a great deal.

#12

Just had a peep, but it seems I can’t see a people event filter in the places view.
How can I use filters to generate a list equivalent to the Quickview list of person/family events and add place co-ordinates to the data set?

#13

In the Places view, you can create a custom filter based on the rule called “Places of events matching the <event filter>” (under the category “General filters”). But first, you need to go into the Events view and create a custom filter to select the events that you want, so that you can then reference it as the “<event filter>” in that rule.

#14

Another option would be to create a feature request to add the place coordinates to the Events view, so that you could just filter and export from there.

#15

The drawback of exporting from Events is that you’d have duplicates. The Geography view collates events in each place for the filtered group of people.

You’d need a ‘unique’ values list of places (which also have a valid Lat/Long) so that the count of Markers would match the count of exported records.

So I guess what you really want is a Filter set that looks at the Geography view mode and lists those Records. Dunno if that is a viable option.

#16

Yup, that’s about it.

In the meantime I think I’ve twigged the filters to give me two csv files; people/event/places and linked places. I can combine the two files and import into myMaps for display. Not exactly automated, but will ease creating the data set.

Presumably, assembling data sets for creating heat maps in a third party app can be achieved in a similar fashion.