[OpenLayers-Dev] Abusing OpenLayers for a non-geo application: plausible?

[Sean Gillies]

Hendrik,

You get GML for free if you similarly abuse GeoServer to serve the vectors.
If your vectors are partitioned by image (each with their own coordinate
system) you can get plenty of mileage out of a GeoJSON doc and and OL's
fixed HTTP strategy. You can find OL examples of editing vectors via JSON in
a web mapping framework called MapFish.

I found it easy to work with Djatoka in real world units instead of pixel
units. You might have to work in fractional meters unless you extend OL and
add µm to its list of supported units.

Cheers,

On Sep 27, 2010 8:01 AM, "Hendrik Fuß" <hendrik.fuss at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

thanks everyone for the comments. So far I have experimented with a
Zoomify layer and a few editing controls and got really promising
results. I'm all excited. OpenLayers rocks!

OL/Zoomify seems to handle pixel coordinates well. I'm still
struggling to teach it micrometers instead of pixels... will need to
have a closer look at the docs I suppose. I will definitely look into
tile servers such as iipimage and djatoka, as well as into gdal2tiles.

I think most of the work on my side will be about serving and storing
vector content on the server side. GML is probably okay for me, even
if I feel a bit strange about using a "geographic markup language" for
my non-geographical application. I will also need to write some custom
event handlers for drawing on the client side: I need a freehand style
drawing tool, as well as ellipse and circle tools.

Is there any piece of developer documentation that you would recommend
apart from the APIs, such as books?

Again, thanks for your input. If I proceed with the project, I'm
hoping to finally contribute code back to OpenLayers as far as
possible.

bye
Hendrik



2010/9/27 Adrià Mercader <amercader.dev at gmail.com>:

> Hi Hendrick,
>
> Sean's answer covers all the main aspects you may face using OL with
> non-geo im...
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