GPS and Google Earth

A track file created by my GPS can be imported into Google Earth either
directly as a GPX, or after conversion to a KML. In both cases, the
track as displayed looks identical. And in both cases, I cannot figure
out how to get G-E to tell me the length of the track (i.e. how far I
walked). If I use G-E's Tools/Ruler/Path to manually draw the path
(which I was doing before I got the GPS), I get the path length
automatically.

Is there a way to get G-E to tell me the length of a path, starting from
a GPX or KML file? I poked around in G-E Community, but couldn't find
anything useful.

Mac, OS X 10.5 and G-E 5.0.something, if it matters.

Isaac

Google Earth (as far as I know) doesn not have such feature.
You should youse external program.

I wrote one (but it's for Win, sorry! ) that calculates the distance
traveled and converts to KML with some "additions"

Anyway, if you want to give a look: www.claudegps.altervista.org

In article


After some more poking around:

G-E may not have such a feature, but the information I was hoping for is
right in the KML file (but *not* in the GPX file that was used to create
the KML). I found it by opening the two files in a text editor and
comparing them.

Now for the interesting part:

After you load the KML into G-E, if you click on the title of the folder
immediately inside the folder "Tracks" associated with the KML (mine is
named "no name"), a box pops up containing the summary info, including
the total length of the path.

So it's a peculiar way to go about it, but I now have the thing I wanted
the GPS for all along: how far did I walk today?

Actually, knowing that the data is in the KML as plain text is probably
better than going through G-E, as I can easily write a script that
parses the KML and extracts the length (which, after all, is the real
beauty of XML as a way of formatting data files).

Isaac

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This means that your SW used to create the KML calculates the path
length and adds it in the KML.
This is not feature of KML, but comes from the sw used to generate it.