Flou (GIS App) Update

The GIS app now has a name. It’s called Flou. I like it, and it doesn’t seem to be taken.

Qt has wonderful documentation, but that doesn’t make up for a lack of community. I’ve been developing with Qt for the past few months now, and it is the framework of choice for the creation of this application. Qt is a great framework, with great documentation. Anything you need reference wise is found in that bulk of documentation included with their IDE. There’s also a solid set of demo code bundled. The problem is that it isn’t enough.

Equate trying to learn Qt as learning a new foreign language; say the fictitious Tjahiri. You’re trying to write a book in this language, Tjahiri, of which you know nothing. You have a great dictionary, and a phrase book – but that’s it. If you have questions that go beyond the scope of these tool’s ability to assist, you’re stuck.

In any case, I’ve been practicing. I built a podcasting application that downloads from not just RSS feeds, but also Twitter and any other page accessible through a web server. Previously, my experience with Qt consisted of building a series of one off applications: five or six widgets, two dialog windows, etc. This was aimed at getting used to doing larger apps.

I’m going to make Flou as minimalist as possible. The intent is to create a core that handles the presentation of maps, the coordinate system for each map, the graphical niceties (north arrows, legends, scales.) All other processing will be handled by outside binaries.  The end effect is to make developing for the platform as simple as possible. You want to add new functionality? Edit the XML configuration script which populates Flou’s menus, and add an entry that points to your executable. That’s it.*

* Almost. The input/output of the executables would be standardized.