[ka-Map-dev] future of ka-Map

[Paul Spencer]

Hi,

just wondering what, if anything, people are planning to do with ka- 
Map these days.  I have a feeling that most developer efforts are, in  
fact, going into OpenLayers.  However, ka-Map has a few features that  
are appealing to some folks and are not served by OpenLayers:

1) server-side configuration without changing the client side
2) written in php
3) tile creation/management

I think it may be useful to pull out portions of ka-Map's server side  
stuff, clean it up and add some new features, and provide more direct  
support for OpenLayers.  I'm not entirely sure what this would look  
like but it may be something like:

* a php-based configuration file similar to the existing config.php  
for specifying various options and identifying maps and tile caches
* a php-based tile engine similar to the existing tile.php for  
dynamically serving tiles from a cache and rendering them as necessary
* a php-based tool that returns javascript or json to the client with  
an appropriately configured layer(s) (all the settings for the layer  
are taken from the configuration of the cache and other settings)
* a client-side way of using the javascript or json from the server- 
side - could be as simple as including a script tag after  
OpenLayers.js or an entirely new Control or add-in for OpenLayers.

This would focus efforts on improving tile.php rendering, tile  
management tools such as precache.php, and cleaning up that code while  
leaving the javascript stuff to OpenLayers.

Comments?

__________________________________________

    Paul Spencer
    Chief Technology Officer
    DM Solutions Group Inc
    http://www.dmsolutions.ca/