On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode <use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote: > I'm looking for any help or suggestions for existing apps that can do > (something like) what I want to do - could even be a clever way to use a > feature I've not found in Google maps, or pple maps, or ... > Hi Alex, I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to achieve but here is a scenario that might address some of your needs:
You have a local Scout group and you want all the children in the group to know where all the other kids and group leaders live so you want to produce a map with place markers that can be easily shared. So I'd get all the kids to go home, get onto Google Maps and find their own home using Street View. Once they've found their home, they take a copy of the URL and have them email it to you. The entire URL will look like this: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@52.7810059,-1.7254772,3a,75y,38.54h,87.5t,358.22r/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNB14D3D9SvOQvL8Efe9h8w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 The format is pretty straight forward to decipher, the two numbers directly after the @ is the latitude and longitude. It would be easy to write an LC utility to strip the address to just the Lat and Long. Take this Lat and Long and paste it into Google Earth. Note I started out in "Maps" because of Street View - it is much easier to find your own home in Maps vs Earth. Obviously pasting the Lat Long into Earth will take you to exactly the same spot. In Earth you can then place multiple 'Placemarkers' and give them appropriate names and descriptions - that are like pop up tooltips. I'd name the Placemarkers after the kid's name, and for the description enter their proper address. Once you've entered all the Placemarker details, you can scale your view to cover just the area that includes all your Placemarkers. You can then save this as a .kmz file and send it out to everyone. When anyone opens the file they'll see exactly what you saw when you saved it; but it doesn't preclude them from zooming in and out or panning around. Google Earth is available on all the popular desktop and mobile OSes and is free. Lastly, .kmz files are basically an xml file as defined by Google. Again the format is pretty simple to decipher - or you could look it up on the internet and have it precisely described to you. I would think it would be relatively simple to define a procedure (less simple to have the kids actually follow it) where the kids send you an email with the body is in a format like: URL: qerpoqueoruqweouqeoruqoru Your fullname: oiu lh mnbmb Your Full address: 765 hohjjkl jhgjgh ouyiuy UYT 432 FHG and then have LC read the email, extract the relevant data and then automatically add the Placemarker data into the .kmz file. One problem I see is that someone might join who lives outside the original zoomed level of your custom kmz map so with each update to the kmz file you would have to actually open it and look at it in Google Earth and determine that the zoom level is correct to ensure that everyone is still within the bounds of display; before saving the file and sending it out as an update to everyone. Also, Google Earth allows you to create your own 'Tracks' that can be saved and shared. So for instance, you could save a Scout hiking trip and share it and so parents would know where to drop kids off and pick them up, and theoretically the kids can't get too lost on the route in between;-) HTH _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
