Dropchop Inspiration

1. GIS can be data-first, not operation-first.

GIS software is complex. And rightly so! The vast number of spatial operations and analyses make for an incredibly steep point of entry for a user. Without having a single shapefile prepared there are multitudes of buttons and operations available to you. Operations come first. Data is secondary.

Your data should dictate what operations are available. Dropchop aims to only show what's possible with the data that you've loaded. If you upload a single polygon, you can add a buffer to it. But you can't union it to anything, so why allow the user to go through the process of setting up a union?

2. GIS doesn't require a server.

By using HTML5 FileReaders and some special JavaScript for processing file types, we are able to read file binaries in the browser. This allows us to bypass a server and load GeoJSON files straight into our map. With this and the advancements of Turf, we can run spatial operations and download them in a light-weight manner.

It's important to recognize that a huge amount of data will probably require a server. But we are talking small things here right now.

3. GIS is open.

More often than not, people move from proprietary software to open source software because they "can't afford it any longer" or "their student license ran out." You shouldn't have to be able to afford giant, bulky software to do simple things with your data. Dropchop is a project made by folks who have mumbled the above more times than Arc a GIS crashing in the middle of a project. Here's to our contributors!