Writer Notes

Z Values

The KML specification requires all coordinate data to be 3D. Any input 2D features will be forced to 3D with a z-axis value of 0.0.

Note: All Z values are interpreted in meters, so you may need to manually convert between feet and meters.

Orientation

By default, no changes are made to the orientation of each feature's geometry. The ORIENTATION writer directive can be used to orient the geometry with either the right hand rule or the left hand rule. The orientation of the geometry will affect the appearance of extruded features.

Coordinate System Reprojection

The KML specification requires all coordinate data to use the LL84 coordinate system. All features will be reprojected to LL84 prior to output; if the writer encounters a feature that is not tagged with a coordinate system, the translation will terminate.

Styling

The writer supports the creation of "inline" styles. I.e. <Style> elements that are contained by the <Placemark> element. To add an inline style to a element, merely add any of the KML Element attributes for the Style element.

Information Point Icons

Information Point Icons are a mechanism that allows polygons to be "clickable" within the Google Earth interface. By default, polygons displayed in Google Earth are only selectable via the left-hand navigation tree. If, however, the polygon is part of an aggregate that in turn contains a point geometry element, Google Earth will display an icon that the user can select to pop up the description bubble.

The KML writer will create an information point icon if the feature has an icon specified. This can be done one of two ways:

• The icon name or path can be specified as a defline parameter (Feature Type Properties in Workbench)
• The icon name or path can be specifed using the kml_icon attribute.

The KML writer supports two types of icons:

• Any icon that can be referenced via a path
• Well-known icons that reside in $(FME_HOME)/icons. These icons can be referenced by name only. E.g. A1