Semantic Maps

From Mapping on MediaWiki

Semantic Maps Release status: stable
Description	Allows users to edit and display semantic coordinate data using multiple mapping services.
Author(s)	Jeroen De Dauw and others
Last Version	0.6.6 (2010-08-26)
MediaWiki	1.15.* or greater
License	GPL
Download	Latest version

Semantic Maps is an extension that adds semantic capabilities to the Maps extension. This includes the ability to add, edit, aggregate and visualize coordinate data stored through the Semantic MediaWiki extension.

For usage, see Help:Semantic Maps.

Since Semantic Maps uses the Maps API, you can use multiple mapping services. These include Google Maps (with Google Earth support), Yahoo! Maps, OpenLayers and OpenStreetMap.

Both Semantic Maps and Maps are based on Semantic Google Maps and Semantic Layers, and are meant to replace these extensions. Having Semantic MediaWiki and Maps installed is a prerequisite for the Semantic Maps extension; the code will not work without it.

[edit] Functionality overview

Semantic Maps and Maps provide a map interface Semantic MediaWiki, through the following features:

1. Display of coordinates.
2. Semantic handling of coordinates. Semantic Maps adds a Geographic coordinates data type to Semantic MediaWiki.
3. Aggregation of coordinates. Each mapping service has it's own special output format, that can be used in Semantic MediaWiki queries, allowing a set of coordinate data stored on multiple pages to be displayed together on a single map.
4. Insertion of coordinates. Semantic Maps provides custom Semantic Forms input types. These input types display a map with a geocoder in a form to make the insertion (and editing) of coordinates easy for users.

[edit] Download

You can find older versions in the legacy downloads section of the version history page.

You can also download the code directly via SVN from the MediaWiki source code repository, at http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/extensions/SemanticMaps/REL_0_6_6. From a command line, you can call the following:

svn checkout http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/extensions/SemanticMaps/REL_0_6_6

[edit] Package downloads

Maps and Semantic Maps

• MapsAndSemanticMaps0.6.6.zip 494 KB
• MapsAndSemanticMaps0.6.6.7z 318 KB

Semantic Bundle

You can also download this extension as part of Semantic Bundle, which includes Semantic Maps version 0.6.4, as well as some other very interesting extensions. Download zip • Download tgz

[edit] Compatibility and dependencies

Notice: Semantic Maps and Maps are always released together. This means you should always use the same version of Maps as the one of Semantic Maps you have. For example Maps 0.3.4 and Semantic Maps 0.3.4, but not Maps 0.2 and Semantic Maps 0.3.

For a full list of dependency tables of all releases, see the Semantic Maps dependencies category.

[edit] Installation

Make sure you have Semantic MediaWiki, Maps and Validator successfully installed before proceeding with the installation. Once you have downloaded the code, place the 'SemanticMaps' directory within your MediaWiki 'extensions' directory. Then add the following code to your LocalSettings.php file after the lines that install Maps:

require_once( "$IP/extensions/SemanticMaps/SemanticMaps.php" );

The placement of the inclusion of Maps and Semantic Maps needs to be at a certain position. Hold the following rules into account:

• Maps needs to be included before Semantic Maps.
• Semantic MediaWiki needs to be included before Maps.
• Semantic Forms (if used) needs to be included before Maps (after SMW).

An example of a typical inclusion order: ..., SMW, ..., SF, ..., Maps, SM, ...

Once you have successfully installed Semantic Maps, please add your wiki to the sites that use Semantic Maps section on mediawiki.org.

[edit] Installing 0.6 and above

This applies only to people installing version 0.6 or later.

Once You installed Semantic Maps, go to Special:SMWAdmin and run "database installation and upgrade". If you do not do this, geographic coordinates will not work properly, and you might encounters database errors on pages using them anyway.

[edit] Upgrading to 0.6 and above

This applies to everyone upgrading from the first Semantic Google Maps to Semantic Maps 0.5.5.

Make sure you have upgraded SMW to version 1.5.1 before installing Semantic Maps 0.6!

When upgrading to 0.6 from any previous version, you need to run the "database installation and upgrade" script in Special:SMWAdmin. Not doing this will result into fatal PHP errors. You will also need to run the "data repair and upgrade" script on the same page, which is required in order to store all coordinates so that Semantic Maps recognizes them. Not doing this will result into queries not returning any coordinates.

[edit] Upgrading from Semantic Google Maps

If you have Semantic Google Maps installed, and want to upgrade to Semantic Maps, these are the steps you need to follow:

• Remove the SemanticGoogleMaps directory from your extension directory.
• Remove (when you use it) Google Geocoder in a similar fashion.
• Upload both Maps and Semantic Maps to your extension directory.
• Make sure your API keys are in the right place (the variable $wgGoogleMapsKey will need to be renamed, or copied, to $egGoogleMapsKey).
• Change all #semantic_google_map parser functions with #display_point.
• Add parameter names to the value of the #display_point calls.

After doing all these steps, you should be done. Maps and Semantic Maps are designed to be backward compatible with SGM, so all SGM code should work on Semantic Maps. If you encounter some problem though, please let the extension developers know.

[edit] Version

Semantic Maps displaying the result of a compound query with Google Maps.

Semantic Maps is currently at version 0.6.6 (2010-08-26). It is still considered beta, since some small issues might be present. However, it has been tested quite thoroughly, and should not cause any big problems.

[edit] Planned features

Curious about the upcoming features in the next release? The future work page contains on overview of the planned features, and the proposals that have been turned down.

[edit] Change log

This list only contains the versions and their release dates. For a list of all changes made, view the change log section of the version history page.

• Version 0.6 (2010-05-31)
  • Version 0.6.1 (2010-06-04)
  • Version 0.6.2 (2010-06-07)
  • Version 0.6.3 (2010-06-20)
  • Version 0.6.4 (2010-07-08)
  • Version 0.6.5 (2010-07-27)
  • Version 0.6.6 (2010-08-26)

• Version 0.5 (2009-12-17)
  • Version 0.5.1 (2009-12-25)
  • Version 0.5.2 (2010-01-20)
  • Version 0.5.3 (2010-02-01)
  • Version 0.5.4 (2010-03-01)
  • Version 0.5.5 (2010-03-20)

• Version 0.4 (2009-11-03)
  • Version 0.4.1 (2009-11-10)
  • Version 0.4.2 (2009-11-15)

• Version 0.3 (2009-08-14)
  • Version 0.3.1 (2009-08-18)
  • Version 0.3.2 (2009-08-18)
  • Version 0.3.3 (2009-08-25)
  • Version 0.3.4 (2009-09-12)

• Version 0.2 (2009-07-29)
  • Version 0.2.1 (2009-07-30)
  • Version 0.2.2 (2009-08-01)

• Version 0.1 (2009-07-21)

[edit] Languages supported

Semantic Maps has support for English, Afrikaans, Arabic, Egyptian Spoken Arabic, Belarusian, Breton, Bosnian, Catalan, German, Lower Sorbian, Greek, Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Galician, Swiss German, Hebrew, Upper Sorbian, Hungarian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Ripoarisch, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Dutch, Norwegian Nynorsk, Norwegian, Occitan, Polish, Piedmontese, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Tarandíne, Russian, Slovak, Serbian Cyrillic ekavian, Serbian Latin ekavian, Swedish, Telugu, Tagalog, Veps, Vietnamese, Volapük, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and others.

[edit] Work for hire

The following people can be hired to set up a wiki that uses Maps and Semantic Maps, along with other MediaWiki components.

• Jeroen De Dauw - You can also hire me to develop new features for Maps or it's extensions, or do optimizations for your specific needs. Just send me an email.

[edit] Getting support

If you have any Semantic Maps related questions, you can add them to the Talk page of the extension page on mediawiki.org. Do NOT add questions on this wiki. You can alternatively also place any questions on the Semantic MediaWiki mailing list, semediawiki-user. If possible, add "[SM]" at the beginning of the subject line, to clarify the subject matter. Please contact the extensions authors only directly for urgent matters. Placing your questions on the talk page will create useful references for other people with similar problems.

[edit] Supporting further development

Are you using Semantic Maps, and want to show a sign of gratitude for it's development? You can make a donation to support further development.

[edit] External links

• Extension page on mediawiki.org
• Blog posts of the author about Semantic Maps
• Powerpoint presentation about MediaWiki, SMW, Maps and Semantic Maps 0.5.3 used at a presentation in Gent, February 2010.
• Powerpoint presentation, about Maps and Semantic Maps 0.4 used at Semantic MediaWiki Camp 2009.

[edit] See also

• Maps
• Semantic Bundle
• Semantic Forms
• Semantic MediaWiki
• Semantic Result Formats