Plugins
From MapWindow GIS
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MapWindow Plug-ins
MapWindow has an extensible architecture that allows you to write plug-ins to add functionality using Visual Basic .NET or C#. Default plug-ins included with the MapWindow download include:
- Shapefile Editor - For editing shape file geometry
- Grid Wizard - For importing and converting different grid data formats
- Attribute Table Editor - For viewing and editing shapefile attribute table data
- Feature Identifier and Labeler - For identifying features and adding labels
- GIS Tools - For clipping, assigning projections and reprojecting raster and vector data
In addition to these, several existing plug-ins other plug-ins are available for download from the MapWindow downloads page.
Your Plug-ins
There are many cases where it may be useful to write your own plug-ins. For example, you may want to write a plug-in to:
- Plot housing density by housing type based on a click on a particular neighborhood;
- Re-project data from one projection to another;
- Calculate the total upstream length of a stream network based on a selected stream;
- Simulate a battlefield with tanks, obstacles and other interactive elements;
- Launch a web-browser with the company web site for each of the businesses in a town based on a selection of a building on a map;
- Compute and display land cover distribution within a selected region;
- etc...
If you are interested in writing MapWindow plug-ins for your own use, or for redistributing them to others, you should look at sample code and take a shot at it. You'll find that it is very easy to do and quite fun.
You have the copyright and licensing rights for any plug-in that you write. This means that you can sell your plug-ins if you would like. Regardless of how you choose to license your own code, we would be happy to add your plug-in to our plug-ins download page either directly, or as a link to your company or personal page.
Sample Code
Most of the plug-ins on the MapWindow download page include source code that you can use as a model when writing your own plug-ins. One of the best plug-ins to look at for a sample code reference is the Feature Identifier that is part of the MapWindow application source code download. This plug-in is a fairly complete example of working with both vector and raster data through a plug-in.
Documentation
Draft documentation is available for download here: MapWinInterfaces.chm.
If you have the latest Windows updates installed, chm files might not work. A possible work around is to uncheck 'Always warn before opening these files'.
