Mapbender

[Lester Caine]

Arnulf Christl wrote:

>>> http://www.mapbender.org
>> Because I had not found it yet ?

> Where else do you propose to promote new Free Software projects? We cant
> afford TV commercials although i believe that could be really funny.
Have the same problem with Firebird ;)

>> There is a lot of good stuff out there, but it is buried under twice as
>> many dead ends and bad links. Even the 'Demo Server' link on mapbender
>> does not seem to do anything :(
>
> Works fine for me using FireFox (though newer versions are bad crashers
> :-( ), MS IE and Opera (new version) on Windows 2000/3 XP, Ubuntu,
> FreeBSD, Debian, Mandrake/driva, SuSE. Tell me whats wrong & we have a
> look into it.
OK I went for wms_europe -> blank, then wms_world -> blank so I gave up
- now I've gone back and some of the others actually work :)

> Xenu reports not one dead end on Mapbender.org. All Mapbender interfaces
> on this site are in constant state of flux - conceded. This is not a
> productive environment but a place to show, learn, experiment and
> discuss. Go to the gallery to find some productive environments or google.
The comment was ment to be general, but I was running mapbender on the
other screen and not getting very far with the demo :(

>> Like other people *I* would like a live coordinate display on the
>> client, jBox put me off because it says 'java' and I have enough fun
>> with PHP and Javascript after 25 years of C/Pascal/Algol programming :)
>
> Want the coordinates like it is done here:
> http://wms1.ccgis.de/mapbender2/frames/login.php?name=mb&password=mb&mb_user_myGui=gui
Having to switch it ON was not intuitive - but that is the sort of thing :)

> Newest feature there: the precision of the selected coordinate reflects
> on the scale you are working in. The further you zoom in, the more
> precision you get. Nice feature we missed on most clients so far and you
> badly need it for online editing, measuring and digitizing.
Editing may be required, but not for my target users.

>> The final piece of the jigsaw - I prefer to work in Firebird for SQL
>> since the last 15 years worth of data are stored there, and we have 5
>> years 'experience' of 24/7 operation without a single problem. So I need
>> to be able to get to a point I can add 'FirebirdGIS' ;)
>> ( See
>> http://home.lsces.co.uk/ibWebAdmin_0_98/FirebirdFederationDataArchive.html
>>
>> for a source of useful location information :) )
>
> Does that mean you would want to extend Mapbender to use FireBird as
> admin database? You are welcome - go ahead. Need access to the CVS,
> prove yourself and ask for it.
I can't run Mapbender at all at present, so I would need to replace the
database, and IF I find some time over the weekend ...
*MY* end target is a module to work with tikipro, which can be used to
display graphical data linked to the rest of the content.

> We are currently implementing a wrapper for PostgreSQL (our favorite DB)
> and it presents us with problems not anticipated (something that never
> happens to any developer ever) and will keep us busy for a few more days.
Having been involved with a few projects that HAD to replace MySQL for
something more stable I can probably list many of them. I standardised
on ADOdb some time ago, and porting to that handles a number of them,
then you end up re-writing the database script to something 'practical' !

> Just out of interest:
> If the GDV client is the "GDV Mapserver Client" promoted on
> http://www.gdv-gis.de/ then it is freeware, not Open Source. We already
> had some discussions about this...
And not reading German ... I could not see any restrictions ;)
I'm heading down the route of free access historical data from out of
copyright material, so the client should be accessible to 'novice' users.

> GDV-MapBuilder is proprietary (and has nothing in common with the Free
> MapBuilder WFS-T JavaScript client shipped with GeoServer - something
> you might want to have a look at too).
Even more choice ;) .....

> WARNING: personal POV!
> In our opinion everybody using Free Software *and* building a business
> model on top should also promote it. Not only the top 1% freeware client
> but the underlying 99% architecture with MapServer, operating system,
> web server, spatial database...
My framework is Apache/PHP/Firebird which is what I promote, and I'm
looking to augment that with a similarly licence GIS system. I do need
to keep an eye on licences, but it is difficult if you can't read them !

> WARNING: business model
> If you are ESRI partner you should *not* promote any Open Source *ever*
> because else you will be thrown out of the partner program. Examples
> abound.
Since I have already paid for the Ordnance Survey with my taxes, the
data should be freely available - and I should not have to pay increased
council tax so my council/county can pay to get it again. So ESRI are
not on MY list of possible partners!

--
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services