Kugelblitz 1.2

New

• Road map and topographic map: “Day and Night” is now there too, with shadows of mountains and buildings, slopes in the sun’s light, a warm dusk and a dark, readable night. Every kind of map remembers the switch for itself; on these two it is off at first.
• Map: Disputed areas follow a view you choose under Settings → Map → “Disputed Areas”: as they are actually administered or as one of 31 countries sees them, by default the country of your Mac’s region. The countries’ borders and names, the region at the top of the map and “Split into Folders” in My Places follow it.
• Events: The new layer “Fires” shows the fires GDACS has recorded since 2021 as red discs by their burnt area, with names where Wikidata knows them, also in the list in the window “Time”. With them every spot where NASA’s satellites saw something burning in the day before the moment, as a pixel of its true size, coloured by its radiative power: from afar whole burning regions, up close a fire’s front, back to the year 2000. Coming closer to a fire of GDACS, a half-transparent red area shows what has burnt, growing day by day and flickering like embers while the fire lasts, then three days as a dark scar.
• My Places: A search field of its own at the right of the window’s title bar searches only your entries, what sources deliver and the stops of tours, by name and description; the list shows only what matches, with the folders above. Edit → “Search My Places…” (⌥⌘F) opens the window for it if needed.
• My Places: A source can also be a file on this Mac, chosen with “Choose File…”: a file as a source, which Kugelblitz reads where it lies and anew as soon as it changes, such as one another app keeps writing. Moved, Kugelblitz finds it again; gone, it says so; “Keep File in Kugelblitz” puts a copy with your places on request.
• My Places: Kugelblitz reads GeoPackages, as QGIS and many public agencies save them, as a file as a source, also with a double-click in the Finder: each layer of places, lines and areas as a folder, with its columns as data fields, arcs as arcs, in its coordinate system, on the Moon and Mars too. Where a layer does not say which system it lies in, you choose it in the information. A GeoPackage on the internet is a source too, by its address or from the Library, up to 200 MB. Tiles, heights and tables without geometries Kugelblitz names but does not show yet. With the space bar in the Finder, Quick Look shows a GeoPackage on a map, with what it holds.
• Library: Files a record names that Kugelblitz does not show on the globe, such as PDF, Excel, CSV or a GeoPackage, stand as attachments in its column, with format and size. A small button in its row puts the file into the Downloads folder and then opens it in the right app; “Load As…” in the context menu puts it wherever you choose.
• Library: Where a directory only calls a file CSV, JSON, XML, text or ZIP, Kugelblitz checks its content as soon as you choose it, small ones already when their row is in view. If it reads it, a table with columns of latitude and longitude say, JSON that is GeoJSON or a ZIP archive with a shapefile, the attachment becomes a file with a preview, on the globe and to take; otherwise a line says what it found.
• My Places: Kugelblitz imports tables as CSV or TSV with columns of latitude and longitude: each row becomes a place, the other columns data fields.
• My Places and Library: Arcs and circles stay arcs and circles. Circular arcs, circles, arcs around a centre, edges along the shortest line on the ellipsoid, splines and clothoids come from GML and XPlanGML as such instead of as a run of short lines. Kugelblitz draws them round however close you are, filled too, and measures their length on the arc. KML, GeoJSON and GPX get the line on export, and the note after it says so.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz converts further coordinate systems: the oblique Mercator projection in any direction, the oblique stereographic projection, Krovak, Lambert's azimuthal equal-area projection about the poles and the azimuthal equidistant projection. Shapefiles, GeoTIFFs and GeoParquet files that describe their system only by its values, also without a code, land where they belong.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz opens GeoTIFFs that store black and white scanned plans in the compressions of fax machines (CCITT, Group 3 and 4), such as old development plans, very large scans too, and images of 2, 4 or 12 bits per sample, grey or with a colour palette.
• Library: Catalogs that answer in pages are paged in their column under the search field: ‹ and › one page back and forward, “Load All” all of them in one list. In the filter, the switches stand at the top.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz knows the national grids of most countries in Europe, older ones such as Gauss-Krüger too. Files, images and map services in them land where they belong.
• Library: Files of places, lines and areas a record offers you take into “My Places” as a source: KML, KMZ, GeoJSON, GPX and XPlanGML, from every directory, ArcGIS Hub's files too. Up to 20 MB the preview draws their places, lines and areas, and “On the Globe” shows them even before they are taken.
• Library: Map services of ArcGIS without a tile cache can be taken and laid on the globe, and each layer of a map service on its own as well.
• Library: Feature services – WFS, OGC API Features and the feature services of ArcGIS – Kugelblitz reads like a file of places, lines and areas: with a preview, on the globe before they are taken and as a source in “My Places”. Where a service holds more than Kugelblitz reads, it says how many were read.
• Library: INSPIRE download services as Atom feeds open to their datasets and files. GeoTIFFs and files of places among them can be taken, the others loaded.
• Library: Kugelblitz reads WFS of the oldest version 1.0 too, with answers in GML 2. It asks catalogs by CSW in ISO metadata where they offer them: a record then names more services and files that can be taken, and its licence, publisher and time span.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz reads GML, in which public agencies publish most of their data: as a file to import, in a ZIP archive too, as the file of a record or download service, and from WFS that serve only GML. Each feature becomes a place, a line or an area, with its properties as data fields. GML files open in Kugelblitz with a double-click and show a preview in the Finder.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz reads GeoJSON and GPX in a ZIP archive too, as many downloads offer them. An archive without a file it reads names what it holds.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz reads shapefiles, the most common exchange format of public agencies: when importing, as a ZIP archive and as the file of a record in the library, with a preview. Each record becomes a place, a line or an area with the columns of its table; Kugelblitz converts their coordinate system, systems in feet too.
• My Places and Library: Kugelblitz reads files in GeoParquet and FlatGeobuf as places, lines and areas too, with their columns as data fields, with arcs and solids too. A line in FlatGeobuf with a moment at each point becomes a way with times.
• Library: A record with several services and files is a directory: you choose in its column what to take. “Holds” says how many files and services it has.
• Overview map and atlas: Five more projections, equal-area Eckert IV and Gall-Peters, compromise Winkel tripel, Natural Earth and Miller. The menus group all ten by what they keep: equal-area, compromise, conformal. In the atlas you choose the projection in the context menu too.