What is Geopublisher?

What is Geopublisher?

Geopublisher is an atlas authoring system which allows easy publication of geo-data, documents, images, videos, and statistics in form of digital multimedia atlases. These atlases can be understood as minimal, pre-configured end-user GIS which offer selected functionality only where its meaningful.
Geopublisher provides tools for quality assurance and multilingual meta-data management. No in-depth knowledge of HTML, SLD or XML is required to create an atlas. Atlases can be directly published on CD, DVD, memory stick, external hard-drive or the Internet. The software is platform-independent and Open-Source.

Features as a glance:

Geopublishing.org software has some unique features which make it especially applicable in the fields of international research, participatory GIS, capacity building, and development cooperation. These features include:

• Atlases created with Geopublisher are simplified end-user GIS with selected functionality available only where it's meaningful.
• Hybrid online and offline atlases make geo-data accessible in areas beyond the digital divide.
• Multilingual management of meta-data avoids redundancies and allows for the quick release of updated atlases.
• Integrated WYSIWYG editors for SLD and HTML allow geopublishing without knowledge of SLD, XML or HTML.
• All software is Free and Open-Source Software compliant with OGC standards.
• Geopublisher + QuantumGIS + OpenOffice provide a free Open-Source Geopublishing desktop.

Detailed feature list available.

Atlas publication work-flow

In 2008, the Interactive IMPETUS Digital Atlas was the first large scale atlas produced with Geopublisher. Since then a number of international projects have shown interest in Geopublisher and have begun using it.

Experience gained during the creation of atlases for joint-research projects showed that they all share a common workflow. The amount of time needed to collect and manage data and meta-data from various sources must not be underestimated. Additionally, the non-linear nature of an interactive atlas and its translation into multiple languages opposes a great challenge to quality assurance. Geopublisher supports all five steps of the atlas publication To-Do list.

Technical details:

• Platform independence: developed in Java, Geopublisher and its atlases run on Mac OS, Windows and Linux.
• Styling based on OGC SLD standard.
• Offline atlases run directly from any media - Java does not have to be installed.
• Supports tiled image pyramids for big raster data.

Screenshots:

Support:

All software is OpenSouce and can be downloaded from the project web page. For special challenges, the Bonn-based company wikisquare is providing commercial support, including trainings, special feature development, online atlas hosting and complete atlas creation: www.wikisquare.de

Furher reading:

For English speakers - besides this webpage - we have a DIN A0 poster and a DIN A4 flyer available for download. German readers may want to check out last FOSSGIS's article about Geopublisher and AtlasStyler.