Map Editor Plugins

The map editor relies on plugins to perform many functions. This page describes some plugins which are available.

plugin iconSVG Plugin

This plugin is an export module which exports the current view as an SVG file. This can then be viewed in a Web browser which has an SVG plugin installed. It's based on the SVG generation library.

plugin iconRemote Raster Layer

Provides a new layer type, "Remote Color Raster" which connects to the Remote Raster Server to display large tiled images such as satellite photographs. The image can consist of multiple tiles, each of which is an image file, such as a scanned map sheet in TIFF format.

plugin iconProjections

Provides a large (and constantly changing) number of map projections.

plugin iconUS State Plane CS

Adds US State Plane coordinate systems for all states in both NAD27 and NAD83 versions.

plugin iconUTM CS

Adds UTM coordinate systems for all zones (120 coordinate systems).

plugin iconUPS CS

Adds the Universal Polar Stereographic coordinate system for both poles.

plugin iconUK National Grid

Adds a the United Kingdom National Grid coordinate system.

plugin iconJAI Plugins

Adds import and export of several image file formats including PNG, TIFF, BMP, and FlashPix. These plugins require Java Advanced Imaging to be installed.

plugin iconCoastline

Adds a new layer type which displays the World Vector Shoreline at five different resolutions. You can choose to paint different levels of detail and whether to paint rivers and borders, This is a very useful plugins for world maps and maps of individual countries.

plugin iconShapefile

Adds import of ESRI Shapefiles.

plugin iconDXF

Adds import of DXF files. Presently limited in functionality.

plugin iconE00

Adds import of some parts of the ESRI E00 format. This is mainly useful for reading the Digital Chart of the World maps.

plugin iconEarthquake

Adds a layer type which displays live earthquake sites retrieved from the USGS earthquake servers.

plugin iconCSV

Imports comma-separated (or tab-separated) value files. Point or text features can be made from rows of the file. This is useful for, say, adding a list of towns to a map.

plugin iconGazetteer

Adds a Gazetteer function. This plugin has its own extra set of plugins for adding new ways of accessing gazetteer information.

plugin icon Strokes and Paint

Provides some fancy line styles, such as wavy lines or lines consisting of crosses

plugin icon Layer Effects

This is a set of plugins which provide image processing effects to layers. The effects include: Drop Shadow, Blur, Sharpen, Emboss, Lighting and Tint. The drop shadow effect is particularly nice for drawing world maps.

plugin iconCoordinate Converter

.Adds a command to show a window which allows conversion of coordinates between any two installed compatible coordinate systems.

plugin iconFrame Layer

Adds a sample layer type which draws a frame, the map title, scale bar, North arrow, a legend and a watermark.