Current work on the gt-swing module

The gt-swing module, which provides GUI widgets for GeoTools applications, is in transition. This is a technical term for broken - but broken with a mission: gt-swing module is being overhauled to become a fully supported GeoTools module.

What does this mean ?

Well, right now it means that if you want to run any of our tutorial applications you will need to use GeoTools version 8-SNAPSHOT. This is the development version which is updated daily. We wouldn't normally inflict this on those new to the library, but at the moment it is the only way you will get the tutorials to work.

What else does it mean ?

A better gt-swing module with lots of new features, better documentation and easier to understand code. In particular, the JMapPane and JMapFrame classes have been largely re-written and there is a new JLayeredMapPane class to make it easier to do animations and custom graphics over a map display.

When ?

Real Soon Now. Much of the work has already been completed. See the GeoTools issues reporter for a summary.

GeoTools has been so good to me I really want to help: what can I do ?

To date, we've only had enough people-power to work on the trunk sources in the GeoTools code repository (version 8-SNAPSHOT). We are looking for volunteers to help get the gt-swing module working again on the GeoTools stable branch (version 2.7). If you can help, please sing out on the user list. We will like you a lot.

GeoTools 8.0-M1 Released

The GeoTools 8.0-M1 release is now available on sourceforge for download:

• geotools-8.0-M1-bin.zip
• geotools-8.0-M1-project.zip
• geotools-8.0-M1-doc.zip
• geotools-8.0-M1-userguide.zip

If you are using maven GeoTools 8.0-M1 is available from the OSGeo repository.

This is a milestone build made conjunction with uDig 1.2.2.

There are lots of exciting improvements (see the release notes below for the complete list).

The following change proposals were accepted:

• Java 6 - yes! Thanks to Christian Mueller for updating the build instructions for this one. Special thanks to Andrea for updating the image rendering tests to account for different font metrics between Java 5 and Java 6.
• Allow Build with Maven 2 or Maven 3 - Congrats to Cliff for his first change proposal - and Andrea and Ben for doing the work!
• Temporal Filter Support - another great bit of work from Justin (a stepping stone for WFS 2.0)
• Detailed information about Function arguments and Return Type - thanks to Justin and Jody for sorting out the use of Parameters and filling in the information for the existing functions. This is a key improvement which will make the library and style creation much easier to use.

This release makes use of the latest JTS 1.12 and ImageIO-Ext-1.1.0, thanks to Micheal and Daniele for the care and quality assurance required to bring you the latest software.

Thanks to Jody for continuing to update the user guide to reflect the latest changes - highlights include Core Feature (documented for the OSGeoLive DVD) and Filter documentation covering the new temporal support with diagrams and code examples.

A big thank you to Andrea, Jody and Micheal who took a number of trys to safely update the map and layer data structures introduced in 2.6.0. This was the result of careful work involving collaboration, timezones,and amusing KML errors. We kindly ask that downstream projects review this work and make the transition now if they have not already done so.

Jesse Eichar continues to work on support for Teradata that will be appearing in the next release of uDig. Thanks also to Lee for working through the abstract data store tutorial. Jody provided an interesting patch allowing a shapefile to write out features in the same order they were added.

As always we welcome volunteers to the GeoTools project. We have a great team, stop by the geotools-developer list and join the fun.

For more information:

• GeoTools 8.0-M1 Release Notes
• Core Features
• geotools.org

The GeoTools development team would like to thank the contributors that provided patches, the users for their feedback and the companies providing sponsorship to fix bugs.

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools 2.7.2 Released

The GeoTools 2.7.2 release is now available on sourceforge for download:

• README.html
• geotools-2.7.2-bin.zip
• geotools-2.7.2-project.zip
• geotools-2.7.2-doc.zip
• geotools-2.7.2-welcome.zip

If you are using maven GeoTools 2.7.2 is available from the OSGeo repository.

This is a bug fix release made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.1.1.

This is primarily a maintenance release focused on improving GeoTools 2.7 and is not devoted to new features. However a few call out to recognise some excellent work:

A long standing glitch in rendering line patterns was resolved; and GeoTools has been updated to work with PostGIS 2.0. Thanks Andrea and GeoSolutions for both of these fixes.

Thanks to Ben for back porting EMF 2.6.1 to the stable branch.

For more information:

• GeoTools 2.7.2 Release Notes
• geotools.org

The GeoTools development team would like to thank the contributors that provided parches, the users for their feedback and the companies providing sponsorship to fix bugs. Thanks to LISAsoft for sponsoring this maintenance release.

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community

GeoTools developers considering a switch to Java 6

GeoTools developers are considering aswitch to Java 6 as the minimum requirement starting with GeoTools 8.0: this will give us an improved API to rely on, faster development cycle and a more common development environment setup (finding Java 5 is getting increasingly difficult, especially on some platforms).

The current stable series, 2.7.x, will remain on Java 5, giving people needing to support the old JDK at the very least another six months of live development.

We’d like to hear your opinion on this move. Let us know by voting on the user poll:

http://www.micropoll.com/a/mpview/943467-423595

Thanks for your participation!

GeoTools 2.7.1 Released

GeoTools 2.7.1 has been released and is available for download:

• geotools-2.7.1-bin.zip
• geotools-2.7.1-project.zip
• geotools-2.7.1-javadoc.zip
• geotools-2.7.1-guide.zip

This release brings a number of bug fixes and few new improvements. ECQL has been updated to support case insensitive like (ILIKE). JMapPane performance has been improved for long running rendering jobs. And ImageMosaic has been upgraded to use the latest jai-tools 1.1.1.

And much more. Check out the change log for the full list of what's new in 2.7.1.

Thanks for supporting GeoTools!

New User Guide

Today brings to an end a three month journey in "porting" the User Guide from from the GeoTools wiki over to the same Sphinx build system we use for our website. This was a journey fraught with peril (having to reinstall my machine from backup halfway through), epic in length (at one point 1100 00 words but I have not looked in a bit) and ultimately rewarding:

GeoTools User Guide

It is hard to express the extent of this change; much of the content has been rewritten; and more importantly updated to reflect the latest GeoTools. More importantly the "update" will be *sticky* as code examples are pulled from live source code; which is compiled as part of the publication process.
Rather than try and offer a summery - here is a round up of blog posts and tweets linking into the new docs:

• Documentation Links (Blog Post)
• Classifiers and ColorBrewer (Blog Post)
• Before and After (Blog Post)
• ObjectAid (Blog Post)
• feature mode? it is in the docs
• filter guide? it is in the docs
• text handling more than just string
• tradotopma; feature model guide (ie code examples) moved earlier
• thanks &fgdr1976 for the patch, opengis docs ported only 30 more to go
• Updated pictures from object aid ObjectAid is nice UML for people who want to get back to programming tool
• Type and Model 29 to go
• jts the interesting math with pictures
• Text facade for InternationalString
• Code example for Utilities
• A few of the Collection Classes we have kicking around
• ISO 19107 Geometry explained and the only three classes you need to use
• Updated a few more gt-opengis pages: coordinate system and unit background for gt-referencing
• gt-referencing docs are ported to sphinx this is the first time listing unsupported/supported plugins
• user guide table of contents taking shape no more hunting around
• porting geotools docs - jdbc image moasic seems to have more docs then all the other image formats combined
• coverage docs ready - half way done to porting docs
• gt-main docs bah has it really been this long since I looked at them? I think 10% is documented. Perhaps just use test cases.
• DataUtilities docs before and after - now covers all the methods
• filter examples now with pictures to cut down on the questions http://t.co/35wCOba
• filter docs now with function list and pictures
• docs for feature collection now with lots of examples; including indexed collections and join
• added gt-api docs for DataStore and Parameter
• gt-data docs for using DataStore and FeatureSource lots of pictures with an overview diagram for each section
• docs for gt-jdbc this time working through each plugin as I go
• docs for gt-jdbc are up
• style docs symbology encoding and style layer descriptor and code
• docs for markfactory with code example
• docs, using sphinx to steal examples from test case sample data for gt-svg and gt-chart
• Q: (style) long page of everything? or (jts) small pages Basically do you plan to print...
• docs for CQL are up covering the geotools ECQL extensions
• docs did you know did you know CQL is “Contextual Query Language"? GeoTools provides a command line utility for you to try it out
• thanks for the feedback - big long pages it is! docs Scary seeing all the GML parsing options in one place. Commit tomorrow
• xml internals are done http://t.co/xPXeiqO including working tutorial of code generation for bindings
• docs color brewer docs are up along classifier goodness
• docs up for gt-graph; now with pictures so you can tell how the moving parts work together.
• docs 110,000 words - sweet!
• new function list with argument names; massive amount of work for little gain (sigh)
• docs now lists unsupported modules (all of them, I put 27 place holders in for things with no docs)
• docs, added code examples for kml based on a stackoverflow question
• docs, you really wanted single page? Check out abstract datastore tutorial - that is one long page
• docs function tutorial showing how plugin system works

Thanks to those who assisted in this process:

• Michael Bedward for continuing to inspire on the geotools user list; a large portion of the documentation has been assembled based on his email over the years. He has also been great with ongoing reviews and feedback.
• Justin DeOlivera for taking time to set up the sphinx build system; and also to the company he works for (OpenGeo) for providing the build box which publishes the documentation after every commit
• Lee Breisacher for launching into GeoTools development with a review of the AbstractDataStore tutorial. This was the original tutorial for GeoTools 2, first start in DocBook (just like PostGIS docs)

The wiki used to hold the user guide will be shut off by CodeHaus in the coming weeks; thanks to CodeHaus for allowing us the extra breathing room.

GeoTools 8.0-M0 released

The GeoTools 8.0-M0 release is now available for download:

• geotools-8.0-M0-bin.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-project.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-doc.zip
• geotools-8.0-M0-userguide.zip

This release is made in conjunction with a new user guide; available online and included as one of the above downloads.

This release features:

• update to the latest ImageIO-EXT 1.1-RC1 allowing access to GDAL 1.7.3
• new advanced tutorial on functions
• updated datastore tutorial
• improved description of available functions

For those building from source (or using maven):

• gt-render-wkt : new unsupported module allowing definition of symbols as part of your SLD document using simple "well known text"

For more information please review the Release Notes:

• Release Notes

For more information on GeoTools and the 8.0 series:

• http://geotools.org
• 8.x
• Upgrade to 8.x

Enjoy,
The GeoTools Community