We build lots and lots of Google Earth tours, typically for use
with a Liquid Galaxy. These tours tell Google Earth to start at
one point and fly to another, displaying various images along
the way. They're written in an XML-based language called Keyhole
Markup Language, or KML. Various KML elements describe points on
the globe, 3D objects, tracks through space, or other items, and
a series of Google-specific KML extensions can define an
automated tour in which Google Earth flies through these
objects. Now for a bit of dogma: writing large volumes of XML by
hand is a drag. Writing KML is no exception. So when I started
building KML tours, I was keen to build or find tools to make it
easier. For my first KML project, making a tour through each End
Point employee's home city, I built a Perl script to convert a
file of employee data to KML. This worked well enough, but I
soon learned typing out all the KML was just half the pain. The
other half was adjusting camera paths, camera angles, timing,
and all sorts of