Some Instructions on Creating and Viewing KML Files

A bit about KML
KML is a type of markup language, like HTML, but specifically designed for representing geographic information. You can do lots of interesting things with KML, but we will not do anything too fancy for this homework. You can pretty much take the sample KML file: test.kml and try to make your program produce exactly this kind of KML file. Your final KML file should look exactly like this:

  
  
     ....several "stanzas," each representing a city
     ....one "stanza" representing a shortest path between a given pair of cities

You can look at test.kml to see how a location "stanza" looks and how a path "stanza" looks.

Seeing your map.
Every user login on the CS machines has a special "hidden" directory called ~/.public-html located in your home directory (here denoted ~). Anything placed in this special directory "served" by the CS web server as http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~hawkid/filename, assuming hawkid is your CS login name. To move your KML file into this directory:

  % mv graph.kml ~/.public-html

To set "permissions" correctly so that your file is visible to the world:

  % fixpub -o

Then use your web browser to visit:

  http://maps.live.com/?mapurl=http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~hawkid/graph.kml

and, if your KML file is correct, you should see a map of the locations with shortest paths displayed. The equivalent magic for Google maps should be:

  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~hawkid/graph.kml

With Google maps, I find it easier to just type the URL

  http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~hawkid/graph.kml

in the search box. Finally, these KML files can also be viewed in Google Earth. In fact, if you have Google Earth on your personal computer and try to open a KML file by clicking on it, it will by default open in Google Earth and visualize it, more or less, in the same way as Google maps.