[mapserver-users] external links in a map

[Puneet Kishor]

Hi Ian,

Now that you have told us so many times to look at geotools, I gave it a
look. ;-)

Seems nice, but I personally don't want to download it, learn it, exploit it
for now. Maybe when I get some time I will give it a whirl, but if it
involves learning Java it will get behind in my priority list very rapidly.
I am not a big fan of Java.

That said, a few responses to your comments...

while I am asking for a "smart-ish" client, I am not asking to push
Mapserver beyond any limits. I think Steve Lime has emphasized several times
that he wants to keep Mapserver lean and mean, which, I think is a most
excellent idea.

I think this "smart-ish" client can be built with clever use of mapscript
and/or some other add-ons. And, of course, there has to be some limit to the
smarts that one may want to embed in a browser-based client... otherwise
just go and use Arcview or GeoMedia... why bother with Mapserver anyway.


Btw, don't call Unix hackers "sad and old" (including yourself)... this list
is probably full of Unix-heads who would violently disagree.

Cheers,

pk/



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Turton [mailto:ian at geography.leeds.ac.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 1:22 PM
> To: Puneet Kishor
> Cc: mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
> Subject: RE: [mapserver-users] external links in a map
> 
> 
> At 17:24 04/09/02, Puneet Kishor wrote:
> >well, it may be a bit more complicated than that...
> >
> >
> > > From: Mark Phillips [mailto:mbp at geomtech.com]
> > > > Is there a way to include URL's / links into a map?
> > > > For example: the user clicks on an object, symbol or label
> > > and the click
> > > > triggers the link.
> > >
> > > It should be possible to do this in a mapscript script (php,
> > > perl, ...)
> > > by detecting the click in the script, and having the script send
> > > an http "Location:" header back to the browser to cause 
> it to go to
> > > whatever URL you want the clicked-on object to correspond to.
> > >
> >
> >
> >let's say I am mapping houses... and I want the resulting 
> map to have an
> >embedded imagemap so that when I click (or, better yet, 
> hover) on a house a
> >window pops up with some attributes for that house... in 
> other words, I have
> >streamed the attributes along with the map all of it to the 
> client. Since I
> >don't know where each house is going to be, I can't really 
> construct an
> >imagemap. I mean, it can be done... its just not easy... I 
> would have to
> >preprocess all the features in a result set, get their 
> bounding boxes, and
> >then generate an imagemap from those boxes before sending 
> all of it to the
> >client...
> 
> I think you're really looking for a smart client to be able 
> to do that for 
> you. I don't want people to think I only ever post to this 
> list to say look 
> at GeoTools (www.geotools.org) as I think mapserver is an 
> excellent piece 
> of software and we use it every day in our work in the Centre for 
> Computational Geography. But I really think some of the 
> people on this list 
> are trying to push it way beyond its limits. Maybe this is 
> just because I'm 
> a sad old unix hacker and I like one tool to do one job and 
> do it well 
> rather than bloating a tool so it becomes jack of all trades 
> and master of 
> none.
> Simply put if your problem needs a smart client then that's 
> the way to go 
> rather than trying to push your server into contortions to do it.
> 
> Ian
> 
> >someone correct me if I am wrong.
> >
> >pk/
>