Mapache -- Our interactive mapping tool

• Projects already using MapServer in Central America:
• CIAT
• Derek's old interface mockups, 1st cut and 2nd cut

Data & Metadata Catalog Database

Go to a page describing Emilio's initial work on this effort.

Metadata

Free USGS tools to validate and massage FGDC-compliant metadata files. From one metadata file, it can create four different view styles: HTML, HTML FAQ-style, XML, and plain text (ASCII) for parsing. Here is a sample output from the mp program, part of this tool package.

Alternatively, we can dynamically apply XSL stylesheets on the validated XML. This is what ArcGIS 8+/ArcCatalog does. It's a more elegant solution, but it may run up against incomplete support of these standards in browsers. For example, the ESRI ArcCatalog XSL stylesheets work on IE 5.5+ but not on Mozilla. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that the reason has to do with ESRI's use of IE-specific JScript and DOM features, because Mozilla supports these standards much better.
Here is an example of javascript-driven application of XSL stylesheets to an XML GIS metadata file, providing different views on the same metadata. It works only on Internet Explorer, and works best on IE 5.5 and higher.