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paleobiodb / navigator

Graphical user interface for exploring space, time, and taxa in the PBDB
https://paleobiodb.org/navigator
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
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[wishlist] Allow export from the Navigator occurrences in GPlates file format #119

Open evlacho opened 4 years ago

evlacho commented 4 years ago

Hi, I do not know if this is doable, but I think it would be a cool feature. As the Navigator works with GPlates in the background, I suppose that it shouldn't be so difficult to allow exporting the filtered occurrences in a file format that can be opened in GPlates (i.e., .gproj), including of course information on the specific time and plate number.

I have checked GPlates and it is really a cool program and easy-to-learn even for non-GIS-competent users. Being able to export from the Navigator and open everything in the GPlates would be a cool option for our users. That way one could be able to create high quality paleo maps, with an open license to use in publications and presentations.

mmcclenn commented 4 years ago

That would not be too terribly difficult, if I can get some documentation on the file format that I would use for the output.

I checked the webpage https://www.earthbyte.org/standard-file-formats-for-gplates/ but none of the formats listed there appears to be the proper one for this purpose. Can you reply with a link to the documentation for the right file format?

evlacho commented 4 years ago

Great, this is good to hear.

OK, checking this a little bit more, I see that the .gproj files are "GPlates Project" files, that are just a collection of the following types of files: .dbf, .prj, .sbn, .sbx., and .shp

So, and if I understand correct, these are GIS-associated files that can be opened with GPlates and saved as a .gproj. It seems that the information of the various points is actually contained in the .shp, whereas the rest are the files needed by the program to plot the points or shapefiles correctly.

So, I think that we should see if we can create a shapefile from the PBDB data.

I am sorry but this is far beyond my knowledge.

davenquinn commented 4 years ago

It should be simple to get occurrences as GeoJSON, right @mmcclenn? And then you could convert to a shp file (plus the metadata dbf, prj etc. files) by using ogr2ogr or a similar program locally. I assume PBDB doesn't already generate shapefiles: it's hard to support direct shapefile generation in a web API because each shapefile requires these sidecar files. But it's easy to convert after download.

Then, GPlates needs only the plate model (already included) and shapefile to plot locations. It's probably out of scope to provide plate IDs for a specific plate model, as GPlates can provide these internally.