[OSGeo-Standards] "OGC(R) Approves KML as Open Standard"

[Raj Singh]

Chris has it just about right, but let me re-phrase in a way that  
helps me think about the differences. Think of KML as a static  
representation of the combination of data and styling rules at a  
single point in time. SLD specifies how to dynamically style data as  
it comes out of a database. The result can be KML, GeoJSON, SVG, PNG,  
etc.

---
Raj


On Apr 14, 2008, at 7:16 PM, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 03:47:39PM -0700, jo at frot.org wrote:
>>
>> And what will happen to poor old SLD then? (So GeoServer uses it to
>> style KML but does anyone else?)
>
> OpenLayers can.
>
> SLD and KML solve two different problems.
>
> * KML: Feature level styling. "This feature is a 3px wide red line."
> * SLD: Rule based styling. "At this zoom level, anything which is of
>   type 'road' is red and 3px wide."
>
> KML doesn't offer enough to seriously replace SLD. I see the future  
> for
> SLD as growing brighter with support in OpenLayers: My hope is that  
> our
> next release will take styling to the level that users are actually
> doing it via GUI tools.
>
> They will then be able to *export* their data as KML (with styling
> information at the feature level): data users will be able to see it
> styled as the creator intended, but GIS clients will get the power of
> multiple scale levels and the complex rules that can be delivered
> between GIS-knowledgable clients.
>
> Regards,
> -- 
> Christopher Schmidt
> MetaCarta