Jos Feenstra
Geofront
In the field of GIS, geodata transformation and analysis tools often take the shape of software libraries written in system level programming languages. However, the societal impact of these tools is often limited, as most end users only access these libraries via indirect means: Through bindings in other languages or plugins. This study presents and prototypes a novel method, centered around a visual programming language to host the functionalities of GIS libraries from within an application, and in a composable manner. Additionally, the visual language is used to connect these libraries to a user-definable Graphical User Interface (GUI). This prototype is implemented as a static web application, making it directly accessible to end users without installation. GIS libraries are compiled to WebAssembly, making the library usable in any language, including this web based visual language by using a ’no boilerplate’ plugin system.