Note: As of April 28, 2003, the Name "GeoDoggy", and the stylized text and graphical logos shown above are intended to be used as trademarks for cartographic, and geograpical information management software and content. This page describes "Web GeoDoggy" which is written in Perl and when it is released for public use and distribution, will be offered and distributed under an open-source license. GeoDoggy uses certain other software products, which are freely distributable with proper attribution, each under its own separate license terms.
Welcome to the GeoDoggy Homepage!
FIFTY States, DC, PR, and VI!
A sample map, rendered on-demand. You can right-click the image and select "View Image" from your drop-down menu to see the image itself with the URL that is supplied to GeoDoggy to make it.

Click Here for Index to US Place Maps in GeoDoggy's example HTML FORM interface.
This is the home page of GeoDoggy (the geoman's best friend). In a nutshell, GeoDoggy is a dataset and a set of tools to view and manipulate the data set. Currently, GeoDoggy is in the developmental stage.

The central ideas in GeoDoggy's design are:

1) Simplicity: GeoDoggy is written in Perl, using one module that isn't in the standard distribution (GD) and some graphic libraries (libpng, FreeType, gd). It outputs plain-old HTML, and PNG images. If you want to install it, you only need a standard web server (like vanilla Apache) with a CGI interface. Although GeoDoggy may evolve into things that use PHP and SQL and other fabulous fancy stuff, there will always be a plain vanilla easy-to-install-and-use version.(Mmmmmmmm, Vanilla.)

2) develop a cartographic dataset, with as much coverage as possible, which is free of all licenses and copyrights.

3) develop tools to use and manage the data that do things people need.

Data Sources:
Although other sources are in the works, the GeoDoggy database is entirely and directly derived from the U.S. Bureau of the Census's Tiger Line Data, 2004fe. Hawaii data, which appears to be in the Old Hawaiian Datum in Tiger, has been transformed to NAD83(1986) for GeoDoggy. The transformation was done with the USGS FORTRAN program NADCON, which is the standard for datum transformations within U.S. federal agencies.

Map Projections in GeoDoggy

GeoDoggy Functional Units:

The Database
V 1.0 February 28, 2004
The Database is derived from US Bureau of the Census Tiger Line 2004fe, which is a license free map dataset produced by the US Bureau of the Census. GeoDoggy's data is 8.2 GB (2.2 GB compressed) (2/28/04) with the 50 States, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It's still in the "shakedown" phase, but all in all pretty good. I will do datum transformations for Guam and American Samoa in due course.
The Map Renderer (It makes the map picture):
GeoDoggy gdrender.pl V2.0, February 28, 2004

To Do:

  • Collision avoidance in text placement.
  • docs
  • better polygon clipping
  • Line styles for railroads, etc.
  • Glyphs/Icons: Interstate and US Route Shields, State Hwy, little airplanes for airports
  • Do a legend, so people will know what colors and line styles mean
  • Offer option to put an info bar at the bottom of the image.
    The Map Form Processor (It makes the page that holds the map picture):
    GeoDoggy GeoDoggyForm.pl V0.96, May 1, 2003
    To Do:
  • Context map
  • Need to re-do distance calculations, now that dataset crosses UTM boundaries
  • Sort out a way for the form to maintain aspect ratio.
    Honorable Mention, uses raw Tiger Line (TM) files:

    The Address Locator
    GeoDoggy addresses.pl V0.92, May 8, 2006
    Works pretty well, relatively resilient user interface.
    This script works only for the State of Hawaii. Right now, it's really just a toy. I may try to make a more general version when I have the rest of the stuff working right.

    Credits


    Credit is due to the following persons/entities for the pieces of GeoDoggy they made available:

    US Bureau of the Census, for the TIGER Line 2002 dataset, which is freely available for download over the Internet. They also offer an excellent user's manual, with thoughtful advice for the prospective data user.

    Chuck Gantz's LatLong-UTMconversion.cpp, which has been adapted by me to make llutm, a bidirectional command line UTM to/from Lat/Lon converter.

    John Parr Snyder's invaluable and interesting work in:

    "Map Projections Used by the U. S. Geological Survey", 
3nd edition, Geol. Survey Bulletin 1532, 313 p.
U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1983