[DotNet-OSGeo] Working towards a System.Spatial library... and Please vote on a logo...

Wed Jul 14 13:30:41 EDT 2010

Thanks Paul... As a Silverlight newbie myself I'm interested to learn from
your work on SharpMap for Silverlight. - Dan

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 10:27 AM, Paul den Dulk at Geodan <
paul.den.dulk at geodan.nl> wrote:

>  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 site as well as 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
>
>  (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
> geology.isu.edu
> 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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>

-- 
Daniel P. Ames, Ph.D. PE
Associate Professor, Geosciences
Idaho State University - Idaho Falls
amesdani at isu.edu
geology.isu.edu
www.mapwindow.org

*************************************************************************
See you at IEMSS 2010: http://www.iemss.org/iemss2010/
*************************************************************************
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