[OpenLayers-Users] Openlayers based generic GIS tool?

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 12:44:18PM +0200, Sebastian Albrecht wrote:
> I am looking for a generic non-thematic GIS tool based on Openlayers as
> a replacement for e. g. Google Maps. 
All of the rest of your email made perfect sense except the last two
words of this sentence. Google Maps is very much not what I think of
when I think "GIS tool". Google Maps, The website, is a specific
application for browsing driving directions and user generated content
hosted by Google. Google Maps, The API, is exactly like OpenLayers
insofar as it is a Javascript-based toolkit for building mapping
applications. 

If you replaced the words "Google Maps" with "ArcView" or "qgis" above,
the question would make more sense.

> There are lots of examples and  GIS
> applications in the gallery of Openlayers but they all are very specific
> and only show one special kind of data.
> 
> A generic GIS tool could combine all the advantages of OpenLayers with
> the good quality data of GM. It would be great then to have additional
> tools like measuring, grabbing a latlon-coordinate or quickly adding a
> WMS source a overlay for GM.
> 
> Is there something like this or is it weird to think about something
> like that at all for some reason?

Not that I'm aware of, and no, it's a fine concept, just not one that I
expect anyone has put any effort into yet.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta