[OpenLayers-Users] Get lat/lon from pixel coordinates via a webservice?

[Kaspar Fischer]

Dear list,

Is there a way to convert the x/y-coodinates, measured from the top-
left corner of a map centered at a fixed position and zoom level, to
lat/long-coordinates without running on a browser? For instance, is
there a webservice available for this?

Background: I need to show on my website a very, very low-bandwidth
map of a specific, fixed region at a specific, fixed zoom level. To
meet the bandwith requirement, I would show a PNG copy with the map
(including credits to OpenLayer, of course) and only load a very small
piece of custom JavaScript code -- not the whole OpenLayers JS file.

When the user clicks the map, the code sends the x/y-coordinates back
to the webserver via AJAX. The server now needs to convert these to
lat/long-coordinates.

Is there an easy way to achieve this?

Thanks in advance for any guidance on this.
hbf


P.S. I have posted about this subject on the Google Maps API list
a few minutes before but have become aware of OpenLayers while
searching a little further. For the sake of completeness, here is the
link to the original message regarding the Google Maps API:

   http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thread/278923f0aad4811a/ad50789413873976?lnk=gst&q=web+service+coordinates#ad50789413873976