[mapserver-dev] Canvas support for MapServer

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 04:52:08PM +0100, Jan Hartmann wrote:
> Perhaps. I still feel more at ease with JavaScript, however goofy, than 
> with SVG/VML. Im not sure what kind of DOM-tree Canvas/Excanvas produce, 
> but I would guess it to be easier to access than SVG/VML elements. That 
> is one of the things I would like to do: access the map elements within 
> the Canvas element *after* it has been loaded from a MapServer server.

Canvas doesn't *have* a DOM. That's the entire  point of Canvas -- the
entire thing is just a 2d drawing space. All your interactions -- hit
testing, intersection, redrawing, etc. -- take place in Javascript, not
in the canvas itself.

Canvas is like a Javascript-based image renderer -- the same way that GD
or AGG are. It is not a rendering language like SVG or VML is, with
interactivity.

-- Chris


-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta