use cases
A DJI Drone Mission KMZ and What a GIS Import Would Drop
Drone mapping and inspection work runs on mission files. DJI’s planning software saves a mission as a KMZ that holds a folder called wpmz, with a template.kml …
Posts
use cases
Checking Private Site Plans Without Uploading Them Anywhere
Some geographic files shouldn’t leave the building. A utility’s network map, the plot boundaries of a development that hasn’t been announced, the survey …
use cases
Google My Maps Export to GeoJSON and Which Styles Survive
Google My Maps is where a lot of maps start: a school trip, a list of venues, a delivery route, built by someone who never opened a GIS. When the map needs to go …
use cases
GPS Tracks With Timestamps and What Happens to Them in GeoJSON
A GPS track in KML is more than a line. Google’s gx:Track element stores a time for every position, so a ride, a run or a vehicle’s day can be replayed, …
testing
How iKML Was Tested With Hand-Written Exports, Random Round Trips and Fuzzing
iKML makes two kinds of promise. When it reads a map file, it should report what’s really wrong with it, in a place you can find. When it writes a file, the shapes …
releases
iKML 0.1 Shows What Is Inside a KML, KMZ or GeoJSON File Before You Import It
Somebody sends you a map file. A KMZ from a drone pilot, a KML export from Google My Maps, a GeoJSON layer from a city’s open data portal. You open it in QGIS, or …
use cases
KMZ Files That Point to Pictures on Someone Else's Computer
A KMZ is supposed to carry its pictures with it. That’s the reason it exists: the KML document goes into a zip archive together with the icons, the photos in the …
use cases
Swapped Latitude and Longitude Sends Points to the Wrong Side of the World
KML writes every position as longitude first, then latitude: 34.78,32.08 is a point in Tel Aviv. Most people say coordinates the other way round, “latitude, …
use cases
Unclosed Polygon Rings in a Field Boundary File and How iKML Cleans Them
A polygon in KML and GeoJSON is a ring of positions that ends where it starts. The last position must repeat the first, exactly. It looks redundant, and that’s …
explainers
What KML, KMZ and GeoJSON Are and Why Map Files Lose Data on Import
Most map data that moves between people moves in one of three formats. They look interchangeable, and every tool converts between them. They aren’t interchangeable, …