[Live-demo] OpenLayers updates for 5.5

[Cameron Shorter]

Roald,
Here is my less rushed answer to your email. ...


On 30/01/12 21:53, Roald de Wit wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> First of all: thanks for granting me commit access.

Always happy to grant access to competent developers offering to lend a 
hand.

> I've successfully added myself to the contributors list and also 
> committed an update to install_openlayers.sh that will fetch OL 2.11. 
> This should work as expected now.
thanks.
>
> There are more things that can be done to improve OL's presence on the 
> Live DVD/VM. Some things that I can think of are:
>
> - Make the example list work like on the OL examples site [1].
>   This requires an SVN checkout instead of a downloaded ZIP file in 
> the install script. I'm thinking of using OL's release.sh [2] as the 
> basis for a new script. This should be quite easy.

I can see merit in this, but I'm concerned about robustness of examples.

We want to make sure that OSGeo-Live works robustly, whether connected 
to the web or not.
I suspect that most demos will be missing online basemaps at the very 
least? We could possibly live with that, if we include a statement 
saying "these demos need to be online to work". Are there any other 
reasons that cause the demos not to work? Maybe source maps or source 
domains might become deprecated?

We don't want a new user to accidentally come across a demo which is 
broken (maybe due to OL being upgraded and the demo not working any 
more). There are 182 OL demos, and we don't have the man power to 
manually test all 182 demos with each osgeo-live release. Do we have any 
confidence that all demos should work?

Maybe it may be better to have just 1 or 2 worked demos, as well as a 
link back to [1].


> - Make example-list.html the directory index for /openlayers/examples/
>   I'm thinking of symlinking example-list.html to index.html. Or would 
> it be better to add example-list.html to the DirectoryIndex for 
> /openlayers/examples?

as above.

> - Create some sort of landing page for /openlayers with links to:
>   * examples
>   * API docs
>   * [anything else?]
>   And update the desktop icon to reflect this

I'm open to this.
Strangely, I can't seem to find an OpenLayers icon on the desktop, so we 
should create one.

> - Update the quickstart where needed
> - Update the project overview where needed
>
> I realise that the more quickstart and project overview documentation 
> there is, the better, but that also requires most of my time. I 
> therefore prefer to focus on the first items first.

Actually, "less" words is usually better in the case of the Project 
Overview. "Less words get read more".

Tweaking of the Quickstart would likely be valuable - especially if you 
were to add screen shots.

However, for any significant update, I suggest waiting until the 
following osgeolive 6.0 release (due in Sept 2012)

>
> Any feedback is appreciated.
>
> Cheers, Roald
>
> [1] http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/
> [2] 
> http://svn.osgeo.org/openlayers/branches/openlayers/2.11/tools/release.sh
>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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