Some tutorial website problems

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Harry Wood

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Nov 13, 2017, 1:14:50 PM11/13/17
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I decided to learn more about SpatiaLite today, so I googled "spatialite tutorial" and got stuck in.  ...or tried to.  I ran into some problems finding things on the websites. "New user onramp" type problems I suppose you might say. I think these point at some fairly easy website fixes, if anyone's interested in such things:


Notes on this gaia-gis.it tutorial

For some reason the tutorial refers to "test-2.3.sqlite" test data, but doesn't link it. It's available here: https://www.gaia-gis.it/spatialite-2.3.1/resources.html

Than where it says...
SELECT PK_UID, AsText(Geometry) FROM HighWays WHERE PK_UID = 883;
I found there was no record with PK_UID = 883
but changing it to PK_UID = 744 works for example.
But perhaps that's due to using a newer version of the sample data?

All the png images are missing. Fortunately the tutorial doesn't rely on them to make sense, but yeah. broken images

Looks like it doesn't have CSS, but it could really do with some, and perhaps it could be part of the website navigation? 

It's well written and all makes sense, but there's some quirky bad english in places e.g. Use of the word "profit" where "advantage" is what is meant.

I suppose one thing to do would be to move this to the wiki on the spatialite website, but (A) A redirect should be put in place if this is moved anywhere because it's currently top hit on google for "spatialite tutorial". (B) The wiki should be clearer on whether it is actually open for editing. It pretends to be, but I don't think it is.



Notes on this bostongis.com tutorial:

The install download link is ambiguous. I eventually found the right download for spatialite-gui here: https://www.gaia-gis.it/spatialite-2.3.0/binaries.html  Found with google, but that should be linked from here I would've thought? https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/spatialite_gui/index

The sample data download link is also ambiguous. I think it means the "Shapefile" link near the top of the MassGIS data page. It should say that, but in any case...

The tutorial data didn't work in spatialite gui.
The TOWNS_POLY.shp loading failed with the error "DBF contains unsupported data types". Perhaps this problem with changes to supported types:


So there's a few different website/other bugs for you. Hope it's useful

Harry Wood

mj10777

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Nov 13, 2017, 1:24:08 PM11/13/17
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On Monday, 13 November 2017 19:14:50 UTC+1, Harry Wood wrote:
I decided to learn more about SpatiaLite today, so I googled "spatialite tutorial" and got stuck in.  ...or tried to.  I ran into some problems finding things on the websites. "New user onramp" type problems I suppose you might say. I think these point at some fairly easy website fixes, if anyone's interested in such things:



Spatialite 2.3 was release 9 1/2 years ago.

The present version is 4.3.

The main Spatialite Hope-page is at:


and has its own wiki pages with tutorials.

All older versions < 4 should not be used.
The older pages have remained, since there are many aspects that are still valid
- but they are not being maintainded

Mark

Harry Wood

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Nov 13, 2017, 7:01:26 PM11/13/17
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On Monday, 13 November 2017 18:24:08 UTC, mj10777 wrote:
Spatialite 2.3 was release 9 1/2 years ago.

The present version is 4.3.

The main Spatialite Hope-page is at:


and has its own wiki pages with tutorials.


Aha. Where it says "Tutorials, Cookbook and other documentation" .  That's quite.... small, and another click away to get the "cookbook" page I should've been looking at. I'm afraid it's all a bit obscure if you don't know where you're looking.

I used google to find my way around the site instead, which was clearly a mistake. Some things I googled:
* "spatialite tutorial" 
* "spatialite mac"
* "spatialite gui mac"

...ALL of which landed me on some legit looking information, but which turns out to be very old. I think you (somebody?) should put a big prominent banner at the top of these old pages, linking current docs. Hopefully google will start to favour current documentation better if you do that.

Alessandro Furieri

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Nov 28, 2017, 5:10:15 AM11/28/17
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Il giorno martedì 14 novembre 2017 01:01:26 UTC+1, Harry Wood ha scritto:
I used google to find my way around the site instead, which was clearly a mistake. Some things I googled:
* "spatialite tutorial" 
* "spatialite mac"
* "spatialite gui mac"

...ALL of which landed me on some legit looking information, but which turns out to be very old. I think you (somebody?) should put a big prominent banner at the top of these old pages, linking current docs. Hopefully google will start to favour current documentation better if you do that.


Hi Harry,

I've now inserted a "big prominent banner" in many (if not all) of the obsolete pages.

Please report if you still continue noticing further outdated pages requiring to be "sterilized".

bye Sandro 

Micha Silver

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Dec 11, 2017, 3:16:51 AM12/11/17
to spatiali...@googlegroups.com, Alessandro Furieri

On 2017-11-28 12:10 PM, Alessandro Furieri wrote:


Il giorno martedì 14 novembre 2017 01:01:26 UTC+1, Harry Wood ha scritto:
I used google to find my way around the site instead, which was clearly a mistake. Some things I googled:
* "spatialite tutorial" 
* "spatialite mac"
* "spatialite gui mac"

...ALL of which landed me on some legit looking information, but which turns out to be very old. I think you (somebody?) should put a big prominent banner at the top of these old pages, linking current docs. Hopefully google will start to favour current documentation better if you do that.


Hi Harry,

I've now inserted a "big prominent banner" in many (if not all) of the obsolete pages.

Well done!
Thanks


-- 
Micha Silver
Ben Gurion Univ.
Sde Boker, Remote Sensing Lab
+972-523-665918
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