[ka-Map-users] Ballistic Zoom / Continuos Zoom

[Lorenzo Becchi]

> Hi,

Hi Jerome

>
> How can i help you in debugging ?


that's a good question.
Depending on your skills you can help on:

-) trying the application, navigating randomly, and see if some  
strange effects arise.
Many times developers try application improvements but forget to use  
them as a newcomer does. Some times it's even impossible for a  
developer to see his work from a different point of view because he's  
so deeply involved in its code.

-) commenting, strong of your navigation experience, about the  
"feeling" this effect offers and if it can be refined.
This seems a banal issue but it's absolutely not. An effect like  
continuos zoom has to be felt by the user as "natural".  The time  
between two different steps of the zoom, the number of steps, and the  
value of the zoom factor between a step and another may change a lot  
the perception.
The User feeling is the most important thing when you're programming  
GUIs (Graphic User Interfaces).

-) looking at the code, if you have programming skills, and see where  
something can be changed to do a better job.
The code is actually completely client side, this is not a secret. If  
you know where to put you hands you can replicate this application on  
your computer and try to customize it.

We are developing the click&zoom in this moment and any suggestion  
and comment on this issue is welcome.
 From the developer side, programming free software has, between  
others, the benefit of direct community support. If this support is  
lacking we'll start doing like "non free" patented software where  
you'll never know how the application is developed and bugs are  
fixed. From the other side we'll always force the community to stay  
behind our choices. This doesn't mean that I'll do whatever you'll  
suggest but this surely let me think and maybe change my mind.

If the community likes this new features you'll see them in future  
releases of ka-Map.

ciao
Lorenzo


>
> Jerôme
>
>
> Le mardi 29 août 2006 à 18:19 +0200, Lorenzo Becchi a écrit :
>> Hi everybody,
>> me and Andrea arrived at a certain point of the Ballistic Zoom
>> implementation:
>>
>> http://www.ominiverdi.org/ka-map/temp/gonfi-ka-map/htdocs/
>>
>> It will be probably included in ka-Map soon or later depending on the
>> interest of the community.
>>
>> The code "will" allow a user to set up a LAYER METADATA value named
>> "ballistic" to choose the layer to be zoomed continuously:
>>
>> LAYER
>> 	...
>> 	METADATA
>> 		...
>> 		"ballistic" "true"
>> 	END
>> END
>>
>> This system should allow to choose only a ballistic layer or none.
>> In the second case the zoom will remain as it is right now.
>>
>> We are actually developing the clickAndZoom function to center and
>> zoom on single click on the map. Then we'll have only to refine (I
>> guess).
>>
>> There are still some bugs but the feature start to be interesting.
>>
>> The code is not yet proper to be put in the CVS and for this you'll
>> have to wait.
>>
>> Any help in debugging will be appreciated.
>>
>> ciao
>> Lorenzo
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>>
>