[Geomoose-users] multiple layer selection

Fri Mar 14 15:50:44 EDT 2008

What if there were limitations to the number of layers that could be applied?  What I was attempting to accomplish was to add all of the Jump To features with bounding box coordinates (let's say 3 layers worth) to the mapbook file, with a unique target value for filtering each of the layers, as well as a new set of tags for the layers themselves.   I realized some new functions would be needed for the geomoose.js file, which made me nervous.  What I thought I could do was to pass the layer name to the geomoose.js function, then by using the layer name, the function would select the appropriate set of feature names/bounding box coordinates from the mapbook file, using the appropriate filter, and populate the Jump To drop down.  I program more in php than javascript (I'm a js hack), so thought it might be do-able, but realized quickly I was in over my head.  Was I just chasing my tail here or might this be possible?

Lee Meilleur
LCC-GIS Office
Minnesota Legislature
100 Rev. Dr. MLK Jr Blvd.
55 State Office Building
St. Paul, MN 55155
651.296.0098  Fax: 651.297.3697
lee.meilleur at gis.leg.mn<mailto:lee.meilleur at gis.leg.mn>
http://www.gis.leg.mn<http://www.gis.leg.mn/>

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Basques [mailto:Bob.Basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us]
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 1:32 PM
To: Lee Meilleur; Brian Fischer; geomoose-users at lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: RE: [Geomoose-users] multiple layer selection

Brian,

It was materializing in my mind the same way.  I was wondering if both the Drop down, and a Tabbed method of display could be could be implemented.  I think it just amounts to abstracting the view of the Visible catalog via a filter of some sort for choosing, so the same underlying request code that is present still works, it's just the options for display that are added to.  It also seems like it abstracts things related to selects a bit better as well.

The dynamic Jump-To menu as a feature has me worried as an idea.   While I think this could be implemented as a service, rather easily, there will be problems with how to handle display thresholding and such related to sending down a list that is simply too big for the browser.   You could even make this work with MapServer CGI only by sending the right extents to the server and using the appropriate Jump-To template for the output.  My biggest problem with it is that there is no easy way to manage/limit the results that MapServer sends back to the Jump-To list.  I often thought there should be a companion tool with the GeoMoose distribution, that could generate a Jump-To Drop down list from any SHP file, possibly even adding in some form of filtering as well.   I'm not sure that a generic (and redistributable) version would be a good idea, but I can see ways of implementing it.

bobb

>>> "Fischer, Brian" <bfischer at houstonengineeringinc.com> wrote:
Bob,
I agree with this.  Although instead of having a seperate tab for the selectable layers I was thinking if a layer was listed in the selection service to be selectable then it would appear in a drop down menu called "Active Layer" right below the "Zoom To" menu.  The same thing could be done with the popup service, if a layer was listed to have popups it would be listed in a "Popup Layer" drop down menu.  The idea is you can only have one layer active (selectable at a time) and one layer that has popups on at at time.  I think this would be much more intuitive for the end user.  These layers would always remain active on any navigate command until the user changed them in the drop down menu.  That way you could set the most popular layer as the default and then they wouldn't even have to change anything on start up and could start using the popups or select tool right away.  If no the application is not using any popups or select service then these drop down menus would not appear on the interface.  I through this out as an idea to Dan last week, but haven't got his reaction yet on the level of effort to make this happen.  What do others think about this idea?  I'm mainly thinking about simplying it as much as possible for the end users.

In particular I'm thinking this makes a lot of sense for Counties and cities that primarily deal with people using the parcel layer.  This still would not address Lee's needs for a dynamic "Jump To" menu, but is along the same lines.  Just some thoughts on my end and what I am hearing from my clients.

-Brian

Brian Fischer
Houston Engineering, Inc.
Maple Grove, MN
(763) 493-4522

________________________________
From: Bob Basques [mailto:Bob.Basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us]
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 11:28 AM
To: Lee Meilleur; Fischer, Brian; geomoose-users at lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Geomoose-users] multiple layer selection

All,

Some thoughts about this, more from a global perspective . . .

Hmm, this seems like a good idea on the surface,  but I seem to remember trying this idea out at some previous GeoMoose development version, and there were some capabilities that implementing it mitigated.   In the end, the idea was to use a general associative method of having the selection controls aligned with the particular viewable layer.

Now, since this was implemented in it's current fashion, I've also run into some occasional what-if scenarios that this new idea would help with, but I managed to get the existing method to work in the end.  Things like having a selection layer that doesn't have a companion viewable layer, or at least may not be loaded.

It's almost point towards another "TAB" in my mind, at least if you keep the operational aspects the same as they are now.  For example, if the MapBook defines a selection layer, then the control for that selection layer would appear under the "Select" Tab, or some such.

With some of the recent discussions around separating out the user configs from the system configs, I think this new method of applying the capability of selections in a more generic way has come up at the right time.

bobb

>>> "Fischer, Brian" <bfischer at houstonengineeringinc.com> wrote:
Lee,

Currently this is not possibly with GeoMOOSE.  I'm not sure it ever will be...it seems like a custom feature.  It would also be hard to program this to handle all situations.  With that said you could either try to customize GeoMOOSE yourself or you could easily find a consultant that could likely do this customization for a reasonable price.  Maybe the cusomtization could be contributed back to the GeoMOOSE project.  Essentially you would have to write some of your own javascript code so on the "OnChange" event of the dropdown would have it do something with the other drop down.

On this note I think I am going to get GeoMOOSE so you can have an active layer list in a drop down and use that to have users select which layer is active and selectable.  This is different than how GeoMOOSE currently handles users specifying which layer is selectable.

-Brian

Brian Fischer
Houston Engineering, Inc.
Maple Grove, MN
(763) 493-4522

________________________________
From: geomoose-users-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:geomoose-users-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Lee Meilleur
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:52 AM
To: 'geomoose-users at lists.sourceforge.net'
Subject: [Geomoose-users] multiple layer selection

I saw Jay's post on being able to setup an additional layer to select on.  Has anyone been able to setup multiple layers to select on?  I'd like to have a pulldown with multiple layers.  As a layer is selected, the Jump To options would change for the layer selected.  A non-working example of what I'm trying to do can be viewed at:

http://www.gis.leg.mn/geomoose/atlas/

There's a Jump To Layer pulldown with multiple layers.  As a layer is selected, the Jump To list would change accordingly.  Any ideas?

Thanks.

Lee Meilleur
LCC-GIS Office
Minnesota Legislature
100 Rev. Dr. MLK Jr Blvd.
55 State Office Building
St. Paul, MN 55155
651.296.0098  Fax: 651.297.3697
lee.meilleur at gis.leg.mn<mailto:lee.meilleur at gis.leg.mn>
http://www.gis.leg.mn<http://www.gis.leg.mn/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/geomoose-users/attachments/20080314/e462c2d8/attachment.html