[uf-dev] Wanted: On-line parser for Geo

[Andy Mabbett]

In message
<21e770780703280458n1af169a6p69a3ab2c0d12d7a2 at mail.gmail.com>, Brian
Suda <brian.suda at gmail.com> writes

>On 3/28/07, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
>> In message
>> <21e770780703280349w69eb0a00u478671e5e863c4cd at mail.gmail.com>, Brian
>> Suda <brian.suda at gmail.com> writes
>>
>> >> Are there any on-line parsers for Geo?
>> >
>> >if you have a look on the GEO wiki page, there is a list of implementations[1].
>>
>> >[1] - http://microformats.org/wiki/geo#Implementations
>>
>> Thank you; I looked at that, and found none, before asking here.
>
>
>http://suda.co.uk/projects/microformats/geo/ is on the list on the
>wiki and seems to work just fine for me.

That page says:

        "Brian Suda has written some geo extracting code"

which I read to mean that there was code available at the linked URL,
available for other developers could include in their projects. If I
made that mistake then I think others, with less knowledge of HTML or
microformats, are even more likely to do so. Perhaps you'd like to
change the wording, to something more meaningful to lay readers?

> that service will parse the HTML into KML and GeoRSS
>formats - what sort of output are you looking for? JSON, XML,
>serialized PHP, other?

HTML - as a minimum, something like the Almost-Universal parser.
Ideally, something which will return a list of the Geo microformatted
co-ordinates on the page, linking each to, say, Google maps or some
other mapping service [1] - rather like an on-page version of the
Operator drop-down. That would be a useful resource, not only for day to
day use, but also least for including in tutorials and the like ("this
page has/ your page should now have a Geo microformat for the Taj Mahal,
as you can see if you enter it's URL at X") where the reader may well
have not yet installed an in-browser parser such as Operator.

>Also, if you find services that are no longer online, please note this
>on the wiki so others don't have the same problems later.

If you refer to LifeLint, I reported its absence on the mailing list, on
23 December last:

  <http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-December/007872.html>

Nobody responded; so I commented-out its 'wiki' entry on 3 January:

  <http://microformats.org/wiki?title=hcalendar-implementations&diff=12037&oldid=12036#Web_Services>




[1] Perhaps to (example coordinates included):

<http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php?params=52.40887_N_1.82502>

which links to many others.

-- 
Andy Mabbett