[Chameleon] Locate widget bindings

[Paul Spencer]

Tom,

thanks for the feedback.  I think your offer is great, and I guess I am 
the logical one to integrate the changes :)  I think that we need to 
make some substaintial changes to how the locate widget is structured to 
allow for basically any number of locators to be included.

By default, I think that the widget should not show any locators in the 
popup.

The application designer can choose which locators to show by including 
subtags in the widget.  Something like:

<service type="CGNS" label="Places in Canada"/>
...

type:

string, required, restricted to the built in types documented in the widget.

label:

string, required, the label to display for this service

help:

string, optional?, some informative text about the service to be 
displayed when the service is selected (perhaps)

other attributes would be determined by the service type.

The popup interface would likely change to a single input, a select box 
to choose the service, and a single button to search.  Or something like 
that :)

This would make it easier to add new services and also to translate the 
interface for multi-lingual applications.

There is an API for adding a new service, it would be documented to 
allow others to build their own locators/geocoders and integrate them.

Tom, if you provide the locators, I can work on the interface part of 
this.  However, it won't be done for 1.99, the change is too substantial 
to include at this point.

Cheers,

Paul

Kralidis,Tom [Burlington] wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> First off, I'd like to say kudos to Paul and co. for release of beta3 --
> WOW!
> 
> w.r.t. the Locate widget, there are currently 4 services it connects to:
> 
> - CGDI Gazetteer Service (Canada)
> - CGDI Postal Code Lookup Service (Canada)
> - EC Watershed Lookup Service (Canada)
> - NTS Lookup Service (Canada)
> 
> I have been testing using other lookup services in this widget, with
> success.  What I would like to do is add:
> 
> - modify Canadian placename lookup to use the authoritative source
> (Canadian Geographical Names Service WFS)
> - World Placename Service (WFS)
> - Zip Code Lookup Service (US GML)
> 
> I'd be willing to roll out the code for these, however I'm not very
> familiar with how they interact with the rest of this subsystem (input
> interface, buttons, etc.), nor do I have the time to get into this.
> 
> So if someone is willing to work with me to add this functionality to
> the core package, I'm game.  We should also think about this as a
> framework for someone to add their own 'geocoding' service with little
> effort.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> ..Tom
> 
> =========================
> Tom Kralidis
> Systems Scientist
> Environment Canada
> Tel: +01-905-336-4409
> http://www.ec.gc.ca/
> 
> 
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> Chameleon at lists.maptools.org
> http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/chameleon
> 

-- 
Cheers,

Paul

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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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