[ka-Map-users] Same API, but map images instead of tiles

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi Paul,

I really like a lot of what is happening with ka-map. It is great to see 
all the community effort going into ka-map.

I was wondering what it would take to make it work without tiles as an 
option. The idea would be that most of the code and logic would be the 
same but instead of pulling tiles it would just request a single image. 
On a pan the current image would slide like the current code and a new 
image would be requested and replace the partially obstructed image from 
the pan operation when it is ready. I was thinking that this part (ie: 
tile vs map image rendering) could be broken into two separate models 
with a common API and then depending on which was used you would get 
different rendering behavior.

Why would anyone want this?

1) less server requests
2) no need for tiles and managing the tiles and disk space
3) maintains the rich no page refresh UI
4) would allow richer server side image manipulation than exists today 
because of the need to generate generic tiles.
5) separates application development from deploy concerns and issues
6) would allow ka-map to do something that google can not do

Anyway, I thought I would float the idea and see what you had to say. 
Also I'm interested if others on the list think there would be value for 
something like this.

-Steve W.