[georss] [OWS-4-SWE] KML into OGC - OpenSearch for SWE

[Barry Hunter]

First of all, will say being experimenting with what and where
'geospatial' search on the photo archive site www.geograph.org.uk, so
the following is my experience based on that.

On 3/5/07, Pat Cappelaere  wrote:
>
>  Mikel,
>  Do we want the GIS search to be implicit or explicit?

I would say implicit, as natural and expected. In fact looking at
search logs people have been 'expecting' it to work. Eg searches like
"station manchester".

So recently added 'near' as in "station near manchester", which seems
to work well. But will probably add 'in' as a synonym.

>
>  > To search spatially, use the format "Something" in "Somewhere".
>  This is very intriguing but not an obvious capability when you look at your template.  I actually like it very much.

> How would we explain that capability to the users?

as above, you almost don't want to have to, but probably the simplest
is with a few examples.

and to this end have been experimenting with Metacarta's QueryParser
API[1], to separate out the what and the where automatically. This way
the above query 'station manchester' works as expected. I've found it
a bit hit and miss, especially if a county is included with the
placename, but shows great promise.

(but still maintain two separate text boxes on the search page to make
clear the distinction.)

>
>  Another issue is the reliance on a geonames-like service.  Especially for users in an intranet.
>

Yes and no. In the case of geonames a dump of the database is
downloadable so can recreate the gazetteer lookup quite easily. But in
this case its an online website where its less of an issue.


We have also added a OpenSearch definition, so will also look a bit
more on how the where fits with that.


[1] http://developers.metacarta.com/?method=QueryParser

--
Barry

- www.nearby.org.uk - www.geograph.org.uk -