[Mapbuilder-devel] Re: [ka-Map-users] Hello from the Mapbuilder project

[Cameron Shorter]

Paul Spencer wrote:

> Hey Cameron,
>
> Mike Adair gave me a run-through of MapBuilder a while ago but I never 
> really followed up on it (meant to, but, you know how it is ;))

Pitty, the earlier you look at sharing functionality between projects, 
the easier it is to help each other.

>
> Design goals ... um ... what are those? :>  This was initially built 
> as an experiment in javascript, dhtml and AJAX and grew into something 
> we felt pretty decent about from a performance/usability point of view.

Yes, you seem to have some good stuff.  We will have to look at your 
code and see where we can learn from each other.

> The original design goal, then, was to produce something that took 
> maximum advantage of the natural advantage that the DOM and properly 
> structured HTML/CSS can provide for performance.

Yes, this sounds similar to Mapbuilder.

> The source released today is pretty much that initial effort and I 
> think it reflects the lack of any real forethought.  The whole thing 
> is more or less a toy application since it doesn't do anything useful.
>
> The newer version that will be available in cvs in the next day or two 
> has the same code encapsulated as a javascript object library with the 
> intention to expose an API to HTML/JavaScript developers that want to 
> embed this technology.

Sounds good.  For documentation, I suggest you look at http://jsdoc.sf.net
You can see what it produces at:
http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net/mapbuilder/docs/jsdoc/index.html
 

>   I am attempting to abstract the core rendering engine (tiling) from 
> the tools that do stuff like navigation by using a custom event 
> mechanism that links the tools together.

You might want to look at how we did this.  See the Listener class in 
the above jsdoc.

> And I hope to incorporate other mechanisms like querying and 
> location-based services too.
>
> Also, I would like to position ka-Map to be embeddable in other 
> technologies like Chameleon, GeoServer etc if that makes sense.

Yes, it would be good to work together on this.  We already have some of 
this functionality covered.

>
> I'm not entirely sure how well this technology would work for 
> MapBuilder since it relies on some sort of tile caching for 
> performance.  OGC protocols are not particularly known for 
> performance, and adding an additional requirement for requesting 
> separate tiles would be a killer in my mind.  I think it is more 
> likely that ka-Map will benefit from the things you guys have been doing.

Yes, tile caching is a great idea.  There are a couple of ways of doing 
this within Mapbuilder.
1. You can use a WMS backend, and force the client to only pan/zoom by 
set zoom/pan factors.
2. We could set up a seperate model for handling tiles.
Due to the modular design of mapbuilder, we should be able to copy your 
titling ideas into our codebase reasonably easilly.

>
> I hope that other developers (like you :)) will take a look and 
> perhaps find something useful or contribute changes back.


Yes, is it ready for a code review now, or did you have more stuff you 
wanted to add first?

>
> I am also hoping that the community will provide feedback and push 
> this in the direction that it really needs to go.  Without firm plans 
> for its future, it may die ... but I think there is enough interest in 
> this type of technology that it will find a place in the open source 
> community.
>
> And it has a cool logo!

Yep, excellent logo.  I want one.

>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
>
>
> Shorter, Cameron wrote:
>
>> Hello Ka-map people,
>> Chris Holmes has suggested that Mapbuilder http://mapbuilder.sf.net and
>> ka-map should look at similarities between projects and see where we can
>> share libraries.
>>
>> Mapbuilder is a WMS/WFS-T/WMC client which is written almost entirely in
>> Javascript and XSL, so it runs inside a browser.  Like ka-map, we 
>> only go
>> back to the server to refresh basemaps or get extra data.
>>
>> I'm interested to know:
>> 1. What are your design goals?
>> 2. Are you interested in working toward a common solution?
>>
>> Cameron Shorter
>> Software and Process Improvement Engineer, Electronic Systems,
>> ADI Limited,
>> 4 Talavera Road,
>> North Ryde, NSW, 2113, Australia.
>> Ph: 61 2 9325 1719
>> Fx: 61 2 9325 1590
>> Mb: +61 (0)419 142254
>> www.adi-limited.com
>>
>>
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>


-- 
Cameron Shorter
http://cameron.shorter.net