In the previous posts of the “gvSIG 2.0: Create symbol libraries” (1 and 2) series, we have seen how to create a new symbol library, through gvSIG, starting from a set of images and, then, create a deliverable package making possible to share the library with other users.

In gvSIG  Association we are working on a set of interesting libraries and we want to make them available for the whole users community. All of them have been created from symbols with public domain license.

Today we announce the availability of one of these libraries that we think is going to strongly support all those users producing maps and thematic cartography with gvSIG. It is a “G symbols” library providing users with a set of symbols similar to the ones that are used in Google maps applications.

We are going to see how this library has been created so that users can exploit it as example to create their own libraries.

For point symbols (markers) we have started from the symbols collection produced by  Nicolas Mollet, called “Map Icons Collection”. An excellent collection of categorized symbols, that can be as well downloaded in PNG format with different styles (classic, iOS, light,…). In this case we have selected the default style.

One of the most interesting aspect offered by “Map Icons Collection” is the possibility to define the colour of the downloaded symbols. We are going to use this option to later download, in yellow, the symbols (if you prefer that your symbols have a different colour, you just have to define it by this tool). Remember that if you want that a symbol changes when related geometry is selected, two different options can be used: define it manually-one by one- or perform the change automatically. When you load a set of symbols, for each loaded symbol, in presence of another symbol with the same name but with the suffix “_sel”, gvSIG will recognize it as the adopted symbol when selected.

In order not to be obliged to rename one by one all the downloaded symbols in yellow, we can use a files massive renaming tool (we have used pyRenamer, available for Linux and making possible to add the suffix “_sel” to the entire set of .png files in yellow). With a software as pyRenamer we can perform also action such as transform all the files name first letter in capital, delete strings that do not give useful information …and remember that the file name is the one adopted by the symbol in gvSIG.

Downloaded and categorized icons, after having been treated by pyRenamer, will look like as follow:

Now it is only needed to use the gvSIG symbols importer as we saw in a previous post and we will have our point symbols.

If we want to have also symbols for lines and polygons, similar to those that can be found in Google Maps, the RGB combination of such symbols can be found out through any image editor, such GIMP,  and used to replicate them in gvSIG.Now only the creation of the package has to be done according to the already described procedure.

This package is already available from the addons manager (by selecting the URL http://downloads.gvsig.org/download/gvsig-desktop/ and looking for “Categories/simbology”) or download the package directly from here (gvspkg).

NB: When using point symbols you have to remember that, by default, no “y” offset is applied thus, if you want that the symbol will be over the geometrical point, symbol properties have to be edited adding an “y” offset with a value equal to the half of symbol size (in our case, since the symbol has a default size of 32, an offset of 16 will be used).