[mapguide-internals] ForReview:MapguideRFC31-SymbolDefinitionSupportforEditControlsandRichTextSupport (Markup)

[Jason Birch]

Oh sure, wait until I'm at foss4g to reply :)
 
If these metadata are required in order to use the style definitions effectively in the various map authoring tools, then they're not really optional.  But I guess that if there's a style creation tool in the same author, then it doesn't really matter...
 
The definition of a MapGuide user is indeed hard.  My thought is for MapGuide to keep its current levels of usability for simple Studio users (little or no application customisation) while making it even easier for application developers to write incredible interactive applications.  I don't think that there is any way of doing this without eschewing complexity where possible.
 
Yay, I got in a big word :)
 
Regardless, I'm out of my depth on the XML, and am happy with whatever shakes out.
 
Jason
 
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From: Carsten Hess
Subject: RE: [mapguide-internals] ForReview:MapguideRFC31-SymbolDefinitionSupportforEditControlsandRichTextSupport (Markup)

Jason,

Yes, I think the use case is the symbol library and a way to describe
the content of the symbol library. Theoretically we wouldn't have needed
the parameters that are part of the symbols at all as we could have
created a new symbol for each use. That would have been faster and
easier for MapGuide but makes the symbols less reusable.

Creating good symbols like the FGDC library is quite a bit of work and
not trivial - in no GIS package I know off - and I am still hoping that
we will all contribute ultimately to create one big library that can be
part of MapGUide. I think that would make it easier to use...

In the end I think this metadata will make symbols easier to use ...
creating symbols a bit more complex. Personally I always push to make
using things easier after all that is what software is all about - make
the users life easier.
With a platform like mapguide the question though is: who is not a user?
In this case we optimize for the person who is creating and viewing a
Map by reusing symbols not the person who creates the symbols.

Said all that ... I want to make sure that everyone is aware that these
sections in the XML are optional for symbols. They will work fine
without it :)

Cheers,
  Carsten