Slashgeo

iknowjoseph writes "Juan Lucas Domínguez Rubio has announced the release of gvSIG Mobile for Openmoko; the first time the software has been made available for handhelds not based on Windows Mobile:

Features include:
Browsing Spherical Mercator remote tile services (OpenStreetMap layers and Yahoo Maps Satellite layer).
Easily configurable access to standard WMS servers (version 1.1.1). The application applies a tile approach.
Support for the vector data file de facto standard (ESRI shapefile, *.shp).
Access to GPS device via Gpsd. A rotating arrow shows on the map indicating position and heading. Coordinates are also shown.

Screenshots, link to the source, installation instructions etc available from Juan Lucas' blog." We mentioned Openmoko before and gvSIG plenty of times. This is an interesting step for mobile (e.g. on phones) open source GIS.

gvSIG project News Office writes "The extension to easily manage the user interface over a gvSIG installation, allowing for the translation to new languages without having to install a new version of gvSIG is now available. It also allows updating or to complete languages already installed, and facilitates the translation to new languages using some of the ones already installed as a reference by exporting the necessary files, as well as the uninstalling of a language translation. It is available in the Extensions section of the web page. New languages are included too, as well as updates of some languages already included in gvSIG, to be loaded with this extension in gvSIG 1.1.2. Languages can be downloaded from here, where is the explanation about how to load them in gvSIG too. Advice: To install this extension you must have correctly installed gvSIG 1.1.2 version." See gvSIG related stories below.

This is an extract from a personal email. It's obviously very incomplete and you are welcomed to share additions and corrections in comments below. The context is a discussion about the user-friendliness of today's open source geospatial software. Here below you'll find direct links to screenshots of popular OSS software, all previously mentioned on the site (see related stories below).
"You are absolutely right with saying that documentation and user-friendliness has not been a strength of geospatial open source software in the past, but that has significantly changed in recent years and is still evolving very rapidly. Before I give a list of examples of the top of my head (experts could provide even more insights), I'd like to focus on this: sharing information and knowledge is the key here. Even if the benefits of open source geospatial software can surpasses its inconveniences for many applications, stakeholders must be aware of all the opportunities available to make the best technology choice possible otherwise people just stick with what they know, even if it's not the best solution.

Examples of some open source geospatial software that are now "user friendly":
** GIS:
* Quantum GIS can be considered quite user-friendly. It is far from being as full featured as ArcGIS, but can do surprisingly a lot, especially with the GRASS GIS plugin that unleashes serious geoprocessing power within the QGIS graphical user interface.
* There are plenty of other open source GIS that have good graphical user interfaces: uDig, OpenJump, gvSIG and several others.

** Web mapping:
* Autodesk's MapGuide Open Source also have map authoring tools such as Maestro and Fusion.
* OpenLayers.org while one can simply copy existing examples, there's OpenLayers Architect and LiziLayers that offers enhanced WYSIWYG capabilities.
* The MapFish.org framework also a Studio too now.
* You can even generate web maps directly from within the Quantum GIS interface.

** Other:
* Several other open source geospatial software can be considered quite user-friendly for what they do (e.g. GeoServer). Others, such as PostGIS (GUI tool), are probably as 'user-friendly' as other spatial RDBMS are. Even OpenStreetMap has a feature-rich GUI for editing maps.

This list is obviously incomplete (I'm still no expert! ;-), but I hope it does convince you that open source geospatial has come a long way in the recent years and is continuing to improve at a crazy rate. That said, yes, advanced proprietary software is still very appropriate (even required!) for some applications, it really depends on what you want to do! But one must also be aware of all the options at hand."

gvSIG Project writes "It is available already for gvSIG the normalization extension. This extension allows separating chains of text in different parts and storing them in table fields. These chains of text can have their origin in plain text files or in the different records of a table field. It is available in the Extensions section of the gvSIG web page. Advice: To install this extension you must have correctly installed gvSIG 1.1.2 version." See also related stories below.

News Office. gvSIG Project writes "The 5th Edition of the gvSIG Conference, organized by the Regional Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (CIT), will be held from December 2nd until December 4th at the Feria Valencia Convention and Exhibition Center, and will once again host the eclipseDay.

In these difficult times when collaboration is most important, we cope with the adversities together with the aim of coming out strengthened by them. We continue moving ahead together. This is part of the gvSIG project and through this approach we keep on growing. This is our slogan for the fifth edition of the gvSIG Conference: We keep growing.

The call for papers for the Fifth Edition of the gvSIG conference is now open. As of today communication proposals can be sent to the email address: contacto-jornadas-gvsig@gva.es; they will be evaluated by the scientific committee as to their inclusion in the conference program.
There are two types of communication: paper or poster. Information regarding to regulations on communication presentations can be found in the report's section. Abstracts will be accepted until September 21st .

Organizations interested in collaborating in the event can find information in the section: How to collaborate?"
gvSIG has been mentioned several times in the past, see selected stories below.

Jorge Sanz writes "gvSIG Mini has been born. gvSIG Mini is a brand-new open-source project (GNU/GPL) aimed at cellular phones. It can access free maps based on tile services (OpenStreetMap, Yahoo, etc.), with WMS client, address searching, POIs, routing and more. It has been developed by Prodevelop (Spain). We are pleased to receive your comments, suggestions, contributions,... and are open to collaborate with anyone willing to use or modify this project, or work in similar ones. More information at http://gvsigmini.org/ or just point your devices to http://m.gvsigmini.org/ and give it a try!" See also previous gvSIG stories below. By the way, gvSIG is now at version 1.9rc2.

gvSIG 1.9 has been released, read more below to read the full announcement. GeoMusings shares a summary: "The new features in 1.9 are summarized here. Some of the new features, including SLD import/export, are pretty interesting. gvSIG seems to be flourishing a bit under the wing of OSGEO." See also related stories below, we regularly mention gvSIG. There's also an unofficial gvSIG Mobile 0.1.5 now available.