News Archive

The following archived news are available on this page (for current news see news):

• 2009/09/21: Thuban 1.2.2 released
• 2008/02/03: Thuban 1.2.1 released
• 2007/05/07: Thuban 1.2.0 released
• 2006/04/05: Windows build for 1.1.0 contributed.
• 2006/04/04: Development moving to new Infrastructure
• 2005/07/05: Thuban release 1.1.0
• 2004/12/22: Thuban release 1.0.1
• 2004/10/04: Extension for Management of UMN MapServer
• 2004/01/08: Thuban release 1.0
• 2003/12/03: Thuban 1.0rc1 Release
• 2003/09/02: Thuban 0.9.0 Release
• 2003/06/26: Thuban 0.8.0 Release
• 2003/06/19: Thuban at the GNU/LinuxTag
• 2003/03/17: Thuban Release 0.2.0
• 2002/04/04: Thuban Prototype Release v0.1.1

Thuban 1.2.2 released

Stable version 1.2.2 was released check out the Thuban 1.2.2 release announcement.

Thuban 1.2.1 released

Stable version 1.2.1 was released check out the Thuban 1.2.1 release announcement.

Thuban 1.2.0 released

Stable version 1.2.0 was release check out the Thuban 1.2.0 release announcement.

Windows build for Thuban 1.1.0 contributed by Didrik Pinte.

Didrik Pinte today announced a Windows build for Thuban 1.1.0 on the Users mailinglist.

He asks for feedback and plans to further improve the installer in the future.

Thuban development moving to new infrastructure.

The development of Thuban will move to Intevation's new infrastructure called Wald. This is a server based on Gforge that offers an SVN repository and several other nice features to make Thuban development more effective and more fun.

The source code was already moved, so check out the SCM tab and commits mailinglists on Thuban's Project page on Wald.

GIS-Viewer Thuban: First development release towards 1.2 available

Thuban is a platform independent interactive viewer for geographic data·layers.

The first development release 1.1.0 towards the next stable release series is ready for download as source code package.

The changes compared to release 1.0.1 include:

• Add some support for wxPython 2.5 and 2.6. Thuban is still compatible with wxPython 2.4.
• Change the way thuban deals with non-ascii text. The internal representation is now the user's default encoding. Thuban works a bit better with a unicode build of wxPython but there are still problems.
• Various raster data improvements. Among other things, translucent images are now supported on a sufficiently recent wxWidgets (2.6). Also, only the part of the window actually covered by the image is drawn which means you canhave many raster images concurrently. Improved performance of map rendering for raster layers (by about a factor of 2 and even more when zoomed to small extents, measured for the Iceland demo).
• Improved PostGIS support:
  • Tables don't have to have a column named "gid" anymore. The user can select the column to use for ids.
  • PostgreSQL views are supported too.
  • Support more PostgreSQL versions. 7.4 works now.
• Added support for sizable points.
• The middle mouse button can be used for panning now.
• Give a warning when the projection selected for a layer is probably wrong.
• Updated shapelib.
• Minimum version of GDAL now 1.2.5.
• A registry for extensions.
• New or improved extensions:
  • Improved WMS extension.
  • Completed SVG-Export extension.
  • New Extension to dump bounding boxes of all shapes of the selected layer.
  • New extension: umn_mapserver for managing UMN MapServer projects.
  • New extension: OGR for using the ogr library in order to load various datasource formats.
  • New Extension: mouseposition. Tool to collect mouse click positions (map coordinates) in a dialog.
• Documentation:
  • Added some documentation of the internals of Thuban. See Doc/technotes/
  • The Thuban manual has been partly translated to German

GIS-Viewer Thuban: Maintenance release 1.0.1 available

Thuban is a platform independent interactive viewer for geographic data· layers. It can handle Shapefiles, PostgreSQL/PostGIS spatial databases· and raster data.

The first maintenance release of the stable 1.0 branch of Thuban is ready for download. Source code packages and an installer for Windows are already available. Binary packages for further operating systems are expected to follow as time of package maintainers permits.

The changes include:

• Translations
  • Updated: Spanish, French, Russian and German
  • New: Hungarian and Brazillian Portuguese
• Extensions
  • Updated gns2shp: Changes include fix for RT#2453.
  • New experimental extension: svgexport to export map and legend in svg format
• Thuban now remembers directories during a session. E.g. if you open a shape file Thuban remembers the directory it was loaded from and the next time you open a shapefile the dialog will start in the same directory. This also works for projections.
• The PostGIS interface was improved substantially compared to 1.0.0. However, there are some limitations in Thuban's PostGIS support that can't be fixed in the 1.0.x series without introducing incompatible file format changes (one such limitation is the requirement for a column called "gid"). The PostGIS changes in more detail:
  • Added support for LINESTRING geometries·
  • Added some support for tables with an explicit SRID.
  • Thuban 1.0.0 used to allow tables with multiple geometry columns in some cases. Those cases worked only by accident. 1.0.1 gives an error message when such tables are opened. Real support for tables with multiple geometry columns is available in 1.1.x (currently only in CVS).
• Fix a printing bug. The region of the map to be printed was a bit off so that some parts were not drawn sometimes (RT#2692)
• Other fixed issues:
  • RT#2237 EPSG projection with unsupported (by the dialog) parameters causes exception
  • RT#2239 (only the session tree part)
  • RT#2245 Thuban don't start, unhandled exception
  • RT#2482 (partly) NameError: name 'wx' is not defined
  • RT#2549 exception when trying to generate one class

Managing UMN MapServer .map files is now to some extent possible with a new extension for Thuban.

Jan Schüngel wrote his master thesis about how to manage a web mapping application with a desktop GIS with the practical sample UMN MapServer and Thuban. The thesis is written in german language and available from the Thuban download page.

The extension is available from CVS HEAD and requires UMN MapServer 4.2 with python mapscript.

Intevation GmbH announces the stable release 1.0.0 of the Geographic Information Tool Thuban.

Thuban is an interactive viewer for geographic data layers. It can handle Shapefiles, PostgreSQL/PostGIS spatial databases and raster data. The user interface makes data exploration easy. Notable features are the legend editor with some automatic classification, projection support and management of attribute tables.

Thuban is Free Software licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is platform independent using the wxPython framework and builds upon powerful libraries. Intevation has helped to start the FreeGIS project about four years ago which provides the most comprehensive overview of Free Software GIS components on www.freegis.org. "One incentive to start developing Thuban was to fill a missing link in the FreeGIS world", says Jan-Oliver Wagner, Managing Director of Intevation. "It also fits in well what our clients and the market demands."

Thuban has been designed as a platform for GIS applications. An example is the simulation system GREAT-ER (Geography Referenced Regional Exposure Assessment Tool for European Rivers). Thuban features an API for developing Add-Ons and other extensions. Experimental WMS client functionality and APR (Arcview project) file importer are two examples.

Thuban supports language locales. The application has been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Russian (cyrillic script) and Spanish. The current user documentation is in English.

Binary packages for RedHat Linux (RPM, tested on RH 7.2), Debian GNU/Linux and Windows 2000, sources, screen-shots and details: http://thuban.intevation.org

About Intevation GmbH

Intevation GmbH is specialized in Free Software and offers IT-services in strategic consulting, project management & realization and GIS solutions. All activities are based on Free Software, active communication management, modern development technologies and usability design.

For GIS solutions Intevation already implemented many individual solutions ranging from browser-based work on digital maps, development of specific applications up to Location Based Services (LBS) on specialized spatial databases.

http://intevation.net

Thuban 1.0rc1 released

The first release candidate for Thuban 1.0. has just been released.

Download from the usual place: http://thuban.intevation.org/download.html

Overview of changes since 0.9:

• Faster rendering
• Extensions to import APR files, to convert GNS files to shapefiles or to use Thuban as a WMS client, among others. Most of these extensions are somewhat experimental though.
• Thuban files written with the Windows version should be readable on Unix systems now in most cases
• Support for EPSG projections
• A command line switch to enable attribute editing. This is a bit dangerous so it's off by default.

What's missing for the final 1.0 release:

• Updated translations. The strings to translate should not change anymore till 1.0 so now is the time to get the translations up to date.
• There's a bug in the windows binary: The startup file thubanstart.py will not be executed. The reasons are detailed in the bug tracker (https://intevation.de/rt/webrt?serial_num=2241).
  Not sure what can be done about it until 1.0. Since the bug is more a Python 2.2 bug than a Thuban bug the easiest solution may be to build the windows binary with Python 2.3.

Thuban 0.9.0 released

Overview of changes since 0.8.1:

• Initial version of the User's Manual.
  This is only distributed in the source archives at the moment and there only in the form of the XML sources and images. The binaries do not contain the manual yet. You can read it online though: http://thuban.intevation.org/documentation.html
• New Translations: German, Italian and Russian.
  Only the German one is up to date, though, as the others are based on older Thuban versions. For 1.0 we intend to have a translation period where all translations can be brought up to date.
• PostGIS support.
  This feaure is still a bit experimental at this point and is not very well tested yet. It should work PostgreSQL 7.2.1 and postgis 0.7 as that's what we tested it with. Newer versions probably also work.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible.

Thuban 0.8 released.
Roadmap for 1.0

After quite a few months since 0.2.0, we are pleased to announce that the next release of Thuban, version 0.8.0, is finally here!
In addition a Roadmap has been setup towards a 1.0 release of Thuban.

There are lots of new features to explore in the 0.8.0 release. Here's an overview:

• Projection Management
  The new projection dialog makes it possible to import, export, create and select projections which can then be applied to layers and maps.
• Automatic Classification Generation
  The tedious work of adding new groups to a classification is greatly simplied with this new tool. Classificatons can be generated using uniform distributions, unique values, or quantiles. The visual properties (e.g. line width, line color, and fill color) are also adjusted according to predefined color schemes, or a custom scheme.
• Image Layers
  Images that are supported by GDAL (e.g. GeoTIFF) can be added to Thuban as layers. They then behave just as layers do and can be raised, lowered, and even projected.
• Table Joins
  Independent tables can be opened with Thuban and joined with other tables. The results can then be exported or treated just as any other table in the session.
• Table Queries
  The table view has a new query function which allows shapes to be selected based on certain criteria which their fields match. Results from a query are highlighted both in the table and in the map. Queries can also be refined with other search criteria.
• Legend
  The legend provides a more user-friendly face to the session tree (which is still available). It displays each layer along with any classification. The layers can be raised, lowered, shown, or hidden through the toolbar on the legend. A layer's properties are accessible by double-clicking a layer or selecting the properties button.
• Improved Printing
  Maps are framed and printed with the legend and scalebar.
• Export under Windows
  On Windows platforms maps can be exported to Enhanced Meta-File format.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible.

Enjoy!

Thuban at the GNU/LinuxTag

The progress in the development of Thuban will be presented at the GNU/LinuxTag in Karlsruhe (Germany, 10-07 to 13-07-2003) at the Intevation booth (C16).

Since the release of Thuban 0.2.0 the development made a significant progress. If you are interested in the newest features or want to discuss the proposed Roadmap or concepts and ideas for Thuban in general, meet the developers at the GNU/LinuxTag.

Thuban 0.2.0 is now available from the usual place: http://thuban.intevation.org/download.html

Overview of the changes since 0.1.3: