Weather in GNOME (again)

[Giovanni Campagna <scampa giovanni gmail com>]

Hello desktop-devel-list,

This is just a heads up that I opened a new repository at
git.gnome.org for the GNOME Weather app I had previously announced.
This is a lot better than it was the last time, and thanks to the just
pushed updates to libgweather, it should support weather forecasts for
all the world, using the free yr.no service.

Of course there is a lot more to do, but I still hope that
gnome-weather can be included as a preview for GNOME 3.8, like we did
for clocks in 3.6.
Basic functionality is there: you choose your location, and the
weather data is fetched from the network. For next steps, besides some
obvious ones like the about dialog or preferences for metric vs
imperial units, I'd like to hear from designers, if for example it
should move to a GNOME 3 content grid and main toolbar, or if the
current minimal approach is fine.

Additionally, this is call for help, sort of. libgweather 3.7.3 will
include two weather backends in addition to the existing one (which
was US only). The first one is Yahoo! Weather, the second one is
Yr.no, the Norwegian metereology service.
To access these services, we need to extend the location database. In
particular, Yahoo! weather uses a proprietary WOEID (Where On Earth
Id), which can be queried using its geocoding service (or
geocode-glib), but is not included in the database, while yr.no has
one entry point using geographical coordinates, and another one using
GeoNames. The amount of information varies among them, but in general
Yr.no has less data than Yahoo! Weather, so it would be very nice if
you could update the location db, adding the woeid for your city or
place, and ensuring that the city or place name in the db matches the
one in GeoNames (including the region or other administrative
subdivision).
Also, it would be very helpful if you could review the contents of the
location db for your region, and possibly replace the city name with
one that is big and recognizable enough, in place of the town actually
hosting the weather station, as currently in the db, as well as
cross-checking the coordinates with Google Maps or some other service.
Yes, my plan is eventually to integrate geocode-glib in the location
entry, so it will be possible to have locations not stored in the
offline db, but I still think it is useful to keep it up-to-date. In
particular, if I ever write code fro that, I think I will continue
referring to the offline db for weather stations.

Enjoy!

Giovanni