[Geomoose-users] GeoMoose List.

Thu Jul 10 11:07:44 EDT 2008

The old method did, in fact, go away.

We may be able to examine moving the zoom-to/interface configuration to yet another config file.  By moving this out it cleaned up the configuration quite a bit.

----- Original Message ----
From: Bob Basques <Bob.Basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us>
To: Brian Fischer <bfischer at houstonengineeringinc.com>
Cc: geomoose-users at lists.sourceforge.net; Dan Little <danlittle at yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:57:56 AM
Subject: RE: GeoMoose List.

Brian and Dan,

Is the old way of defining the Pulldown (Zoom-to) functionality (inside of the MapBook) still available in the new version?  We need to be able to set any of the interface settings in the Mapbook and get all the interface settings (or as many as possible) out of the config.js.   We're using this in a major way.  The old method didn't go away did it?

bobb

>>> "Fischer, Brian" <bfischer at houstonengineeringinc.com> wrote:

Bob, do you we need to do a conference call or WebEx with Dan B. to discuss the popups?

With these popups you could only have one layer active for selection tool and one layer active for the popups at one time.  We would also need to add a drop down or some control to tell GeoMOOSE which layer is the active select layer and which one is the active popup layer.  Then these would always be on once they are set.  This is typically done with a drop down menu where the user chooses the layers they want active.

Brian Fischer
Houston Engineering, Inc.
Maple Grove, MN
(763) 493-4522

________________________________
 From: Dan Little [mailto:danlittle at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:17 AM
To: Bob Basques; Fischer, Brian
Cc: Jim Klassen
Subject: Re: GeoMoose List.

On considering popups, I've had a few thoughts.

1) I'd like to talk to Bartholic about it to see what he's seeing in terms of real world use.  That is, how many people are actively using the popups to investigate more data than would be normally available from a select/identify service.  (Like the multiple attribute display between layers, et al).  I'm not a fan of limiting functionality either, but I am a big fan of having good solid, consistently working functionality -- which is something that is missing from the current GeoMOOSE popup implementation.   This is despite a ton of hours of work.

2) I'm still a little stuck on popups for line shapes.  This is particularly trouble some as there is no "line" type in the HTML imagemap specification and mapserver will not buffer a line for imagemap output.  It will simply generate the XY's as an improperly closing polygon.   All sorts of fun.

3) We could migrate to a couple of different modes:
    a) A click-me to identify style popup.  I won't lie, this is my favorite implementation idea thus far, and I'll give a little description of how it works.  Inside of the configuration.js there would be a variable that defines a popup service based on the URL of the layer.  For the stock MS4W implementation this would point to a PHP script and would be configurable so that the GISmo configuration could simply call the layer URL with a different "mode."  (See Footnote 1 for more ideas.) This way it uses mapserver's query capabilities (preferably with a WFS call -- that would increase the mapserver documentation availability) and it would guarantee that it would work with all shapes regardless of type or complexity.  These popups would display based on an HTML snipped that was delivered back from the server.  If we said, "pass on the WFS" we could use a customized XML format that would allow us to control things like the popup-offset, the sizing, and a
 few other minor details. (See Footnote 2)
    b) Create an OL "imagemap" layer.  This is an idea that I like, but I don't love, primarily because it's still dependent on HTML image maps and mapserver's ability to generate them.  While it works pretty well for points and for parcels, it does a horses*** job with lines and polygons that are not completely clean (either unclosed for some gawd-awful reason or have holes, etc.).

Footnotes:
1) I wonder if it would be a good idea to create a "geomoose.php" script that worked as an in between for the HTML/JS code and Mapserver itself.  It would work in a similar way to the City of Saint Paul's "mapserv.pl" concept.  This way once a layer is configured in the Mapbook, it would be possible to perform select, identify, and popup queries against it with less configuration on the part of the user/administrator.  Change a few attributes in the mapbook and "Presto" you now have a selectable layer.

2) I think the customized format template would look something like this:
<popup width="xxx" height="yyy"><![CDATA[
 <img src="/images/smile.png"/>This is a very happy popup.<br/>
<br/>
Synergen ID: [SYNERGEN_ID]
]]></popup>
* This would also alleviate the need for header and footer popup configuration files.

----- Original Message ----
From: Bob Basques <Bob.Basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us>
To: Brian Fischer <bfischer at houstonengineeringinc.com>
Cc: Jim Klassen <Jim.Klassen at ci.stpaul.mn.us>; Dan Little <danlittle at yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 5:50:02 PM
Subject: RE: GeoMoose List.

Brian,

sorry it took so long to get back to you on this. 

Found a couple of things in the proposal that got me to wanting to talk them through a little further.  This is looking really good to begin with.  After a quick (1st) read through, here is what jumped out at me:

TASK 2 - under Design Philosophies:  I know we only touched on this at the face to face meeting, but could there be a set of controls in the mapbook to act as pointers to the interface styling/skinning?  Something separate from the default Skins?   This is seeming to be more and more needed, especially with multiple jurisdictional authors of data layers in a mixed service environment.  This may already be included in the task as described. This is just a request for more info on the subject.

TASK 4 - Only one popup at a time is visible??  Hmm, this is going backwards as far as functionality using the current setup as a baseline.  I think we'll need to talk this through a little more.

Reading through again . . . . .  :c)

bobb

>>> "Fischer, Brian" <bfischer at houstonengineeringinc.com> wrote:

Hi Bob,
Dan and I finally got around to finishing this proposal today.  I think it covers everything we discussed.  We are proposing to completely re-develop the popups in 2.0.  We should probably jump on WebEx to discuss this to make sure it will meet the City's needs.  We would like to model it more after the OpenLayers popups.  Are you available this week to discuss this?  Now would be a great time to fit this into our schedule.  If we wait until later this summer or early fall it is going to take a while to finish.
Thanks,
Brian

From:Bob Basques [mailto:Bob.Basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 4:46 PM
To: Fischer, Brian
Cc: Jim Klassen
Subject: GeoMoose List.

Brian,

Sorry I didn't get this to you earlier.

The List.
	* Some popup additions/fixes, Dan should have some of this from Jim already, some of it may have also been implemented already. 
	* ID separated from Title in the mapbook, ID referenced by hierarchy instead of from flat list.  This is needed for WMS catalog services. 
	* WMS (catalog) importing.  GeoMoose should open up the catalog as a MAPBOOK (like) process. 
	* Select Service (and others) should work against any layer, not against it own special layer config. 
	* Alpha interface.
Other Stuff
	* OpenLayers 
	* Linking to a particular State of GeoMoose for Startup. Like Google Maps.
There's probably more that I can't come up with right now.

bobb

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