[DotNet-OSGeo] Working towards a System.Spatial library... and
Please vote on a logo...
Paul den Dulk at Geodan
paul.den.dulk at geodan.nl
Wed Jul 14 12:27:41 EDT 2010
Hi List,
Thanks Dan, for starting this great initiative. I have been following
the list from the start but had a very busy period recently. Let me
introduce myself. I am Paul den Dulk. I work at Geodan, a company
specialized in GIS solutions. I have been working with and contributed
to C# OSS GIS projects for several years now.
- I did some work on SharpMapV1.
- Created a library to access tile services called BruTile.
- Started a GIS client library called Mapsui which is designed to be
fast and responsive and is meant for use in new user interfaces. It has
asynchronous data retrieval, smooth performance and supports touch.
Especially Mapsui is the kind of project where I would like to reuse a
general spatial library like dotspatial. Now I am working with a
modified version of SharpMapV1 for core GIS functionality. I see this as
a temporary solution.
Some specific areas where my recent experience may contribute:
- In Mapsui I worked with asynchronous data retrieval and rendering.
There are a lot of tricky issues here. I could share some of the things
I ran into.
- Mapsui and BruTile compile on desktop (WPF, WinForms), MS Surface,
Silverlight and Compact Framework. I hope dotspatial would also like to
support such a broad range of platforms. If so, I could be of some help,
especially compatibility with Silverlight can be a challenge. I am also
interested in support for Mono, Moonlight, MonoTouch and MonoDroid but
only did small tests so far.
Here are some of my ideas related to this project:
- I have witnessed several ambitious projects end in tragedy ;) This is
why I would suggest a step by step approach starting from what is
working now and release usable versions on each step of the way. It is
good to think about where we want to go eventually, but those goals
should not stand in the way of what we can achieve next week.
- I would prefer relatively independent components interoperating rather
than one single large project that should be the solution to everything.
In this respect I may be a bit at odds with the goals of the dotspatial
project. I would rather see a focus on defining the interfaces between
the various projects rather than to implement everything we need. I
could be wrong here. I am interested in what everyone else thinks about
this.
- Try to keep the interfaces simple and light. Do not clutter it with
all kinds of functionality because this will make it hard to maintain,
change and comprehend. Try to allow additional functionality by making
it extensible without adding it to the core interfaces.
- Lets try to keep in close contact with other OSGEO platforms.
Interoperate with their components. Learn from their software and how
their community is organized.
- Try to keep the code easy to understand. The advantage of OSS is that
developer-users can read the code and fix or extend it if they need to.
For this to work those developer-users need to be able to understand the
code. I think the involvement of this larger group in addition to the
core development team can be an important success factor.
- Stakeholders. It is hard to take care of something if this is
irrelevant for what you need. For instance, it is easy to break the
build of Silverlight if you never use it. We should try to get
stakeholders involved for all functionality that we would like to support.
I look forward to making this project a success.
Regards,
Paul
Op 07-Jul-10 19:27, Daniel Ames schreef:
> HI all,
>
> A couple months back I proposed on this list that we ought to consider
> moving towards a common "de-branded" low level API that could be
> shared across multiple desktop and web based projects and that would
> integrate all the best common aspects of NTS, GeoAPI, SharpMap,
> MapWindow, various Proj4 ports, etc. The idea here is to lower the bar
> of entry for potential users of these libraries by giving them a
> common look and feel and ensuring close adherence to .NET Framework
> coding practices. This is obviously a non-trivial goal, but has the
> potential for being a major step forward for OSGeo.NET.
>
> I'm interested in moving this project forward following all of the
> best practices for Open Source projects. So one of the first tasks I
> believe, should be formation of a steering committee. If you think
> that this project is a good idea and feel like you have something to
> contribute, will you please volunteer to be on the steering committee?
> I have already gotten agreement from Ted Dunsford and Gennadii
> Donchyts to be on this steering committee and am looking for 2-4 more
> people who are active user/developers on NTS, SharpMap, GeoAPI or
> other projects who are willing to be on the steering committee.
>
> Secondly, I've taken the liberty of registering the
> dotspatial.codeplex.com <http://dotspatial.codeplex.com> site as well
> as dotspatial.org <http://dotspatial.org> to use for managing this
> project and Ted Dunsford has already started contributing some code
> for people to look at and to "get the conversation going" as to what
> would be included in such a project. We've also been listed on the top
> of the CodePlex "find project openings" page
> (http://www.codeplex.com/site/search/openings) and as a result we've
> got several programmers already volunteering to work on the project.
> (Hence the need for a steering committee to make sure we give these
> people the right tasks...)
>
> Thirdly, I also asked a friend to take a shot at designing some
> potential logos for us to use for the project. Will you please vote on
> a logo here:
>
> http://dotspatial.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=logo&referringTitle=Home
> <http://dotspatial.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=logo&referringTitle=Home>
>
> (feel free to leave a vote in the comments for that page and/or make
> suggestions on improving any of the logos)
>
> Thanks all.
>
> - Dan
>
> (By the way, I saw a very cool demo of a project by Gennadii here at
> the iEMSs Conference in Ottawa yesterday in which he used a number of
> .NET OSGeo tools that included work from many of you, I'm sure. Very
> cool stuff...)
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel P. Ames, Ph.D. PE
> Associate Professor, Geosciences
> Idaho State University - Idaho Falls
> amesdani at isu.edu <mailto:amesdani at isu.edu>
> geology.isu.edu <http://geology.isu.edu>
> www.mapwindow.org <http://www.mapwindow.org>
>
> *************************************************************************
> See you at IEMSS 2010: http://www.iemss.org/iemss2010/
> *************************************************************************
>
>
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>
--
Paul den Dulk, Ph.D.
-------------------------------------
Geodan IT
President Kennedylaan 1
1079 MB Amsterdam (NL)
-------------------------------------
Tel: +31 (0)20 - 5711 341
Fax: +31 (0)20 - 5711 333
-------------------------------------
E-mail: paul.den.dulk at geodan.nl
Website: www.geodan.nl
Disclaimer: www.geodan.nl/disclaimer
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