[ka-Map-users] ka-Map and OpenLayers

[Paul Spencer]

Hello ka-Mappers!

I had a very interesting discussion with the developers of  
OpenLayers, a javascript api for tiled maps.  Turns out OpenLayers  
and ka-Map are very similar.  We decided that it would be beneficial  
for both communities if we attempted to merge the projects.  The  
purpose of this email is to present this idea to the ka-Map community  
in order to generate some discussion on the subject.

OpenLayers is hosted at http://www.openlayers.org/.  They have some  
very interesting objectives which I think are compatible with ka- 
Map.  Take a look at their site.

OpenLayers is written on top of prototype.js, which was one of the  
things I was planning to do with ka-Map in the next couple of weeks.   
It has a very nice looking architecture and the code base is very  
readable.

It is lacking quite a few things that ka-Map has:

* core tiling engine is very similar, but it is not quite as optimal  
(doesn't reuse images for instance)

* overlay stuff is point/text only

* lacking tools (layer controls, scale bar etc) and the windowing stuff

* lacking query capability

* tile caching

* probably several other things I can't think of right now

I think that there are some differences in how OpenLayers and ka-Map  
approach things, but I'm not entirely sure that they are significant.

At this point, I am proposing to join the two projects into a single  
project.  My desired approach would be to start with the OpenLayers  
code and start to bring over the parts of ka-Map that I(we) feel are  
missing.

Please let me know what you think of this.  And point out all the  
problems you can think of.

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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