Alternatives of Google Earth to visualize SPREAD kml output

[Henry Liu]

Dear all,

I just submitted a manuscript of which visualized a SPREAD kml output by Google Earth. But the journal editor said the terms and conditions of Google Earth are not compatible with the Open Access creative commons licencing of the journal and asked me to find an alternative under Open Access licence.

I tried the KDE marble and some features of the kml file worked, but the borders between places could not be displayed correctly. Under the default view, only some borders could be shown. If zoomed in the map for several levels, more borders could be displayed but now it was not able to see the whole map.

Are there any alternatives of Google Earth available to visualize the kml file? Or is it possible to resolve the KDE marble problems?

Any advice and suggestions will be appreciated!

Thank you!

Henry

[fbielejec]

Hi,

We just release a second release of Spread, which is a thorough re-write, with different time calculations, different engine
etc, and the highlight is a browser-based animation and figures.

I suggest you give it a try:

http://rega.kuleuven.be/cev/ecv/software/SpreaD3

Under the same link you can also find instructions on using it.

The main idea is a 2-step analysis, Parsing is done to a JSON file
(it's a data format) and then all the style choices are done in a second,
rendering step. This way if you want to change just a single color you don't
have to re-run everything, which can be time-consuming.
KML generating is still supported, although I'd encourage the interactive, in-browser visualizations, as this is something I've put the most effort into.

Best,
f

[Andrew Rambaut]

I will add to this that KML is not a GoogleEarth specific format. Other mapping software such as Quantum GIS (Open Source, http://www.qgis.org/en/site/) and Cartographica (commercial, Mac only) can import them. I haven’t used QGIS. NaturalEarth http://www.naturalearthdata.com is a great source of base maps (vector and shaded). 

Andrew

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[H Liu]

Hi Bielejec,

Thank you! I am learning the SpreaD3 now.

All the best,

Henry

--

[H Liu]

Hi Rambaut,

Thank you for your suggestions.

All the best,

Henry

[H Liu]

Hi Bielejec,

I followed the SpreaD3 tutorial "Visualizing an MCC tree annotated with discrete traits" but encountered a problem.

The first step, Parsing the data, the output file "ebov.json" has been generated. Fro the second step, after the "ebov.json" file was loaded, I clicked the "Render..." button and there went to a "Generate ..." window.

What should be provided here? I tried to input an output filename, then an error message said "spreaD3_v0.9.5.jar"(No such file or directory?)". If a dir name was given, it still asked for a filename.

The java error message is:

==============================================

Stack trace:
java.io.FileNotFoundException: spreaD3_v0.9.5.jar (No such file or directory)
    at java.util.zip.ZipFile.open(Native Method)
    at java.util.zip.ZipFile.<init>(ZipFile.java:219)
    at java.util.zip.ZipFile.<init>(ZipFile.java:149)
    at java.util.jar.JarFile.<init>(JarFile.java:166)
    at java.util.jar.JarFile.<init>(JarFile.java:103)
    at renderers.d3.D3Renderer.render(Unknown Source)
    at gui.panels.D3RenderPanel$1.doInBackground(Unknown Source)
    at gui.panels.D3RenderPanel$1.doInBackground(Unknown Source)
    at javax.swing.SwingWorker$1.call(SwingWorker.java:295)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
    at javax.swing.SwingWorker.run(SwingWorker.java:334)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

==================================================

I am working on a Debian stable (8.3) Linux machine, and java version 1.8.0_60.

Thank you!

Henry

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 5:21 PM, fbielejec <fbie...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

[fbielejec]

I can't reproduce it. Do you have any unarchiver installed (unzip, unrar?). Try unpacking the renderer manually: go to the packaged binary, open it with archive manager, go to renderers/d3/renderer dir, put all the files from there in the same directory as .json file and point your browser to index.html.

f.

On Monday, March 14, 2016 at 10:06:51 AM UTC+1, Henry Liu wrote:

[H Liu]

Hi Bielejec,

The SpreaD3 rendering worked in Windows, but still did not work in Debian. There may be something wrong in my Linux system. I am still trying to figure it out.

Thank you very much!

Henry

--

[fbielejec]

Hi,

I've had another report of the same behavior from a different user - I still can't reproduce, but for the other user the solution was to invoke JRE manually (java -jar spread3.jar), starting the program by double-clicking on the package resulted in the said error.

[kiran kumar]

Dear all happy to learn and share towards research activities contributions and understanding the evolutionary studies.

Dear sir/ madam can anyone explain  how to visualize the KML file please,

Regards,

Kirankumar