[webmap-discuss] Start the discussion - was( Roll Call

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hey Schuyler,

Great to see you here also, and since you have more the roll call to a 
discuss, I'll happy add my 2 cents.

I would like to see a back end API defined the is neutral with plugins 
for the service you want to consume. In fact each layer should be able 
to define the service that they want to consume. That way I can have a 
web mapping application the pulls tiles or images from ka-map, ESRI, 
mapserver CGI, WMS, etc. If you design your API around a single data 
source provider you end up with a ka-map of a google API. it would be 
better to abstract the service and all people to create scriptlet 
plugins to construct requests for images.

-Steve

Schuyler Erle wrote:
> * On  5-Apr-2006 at  9:41PM PDT, Cameron Shorter said:
> 
>>Wecome to the webmap-discuss list.  Let's kick off with a role call. 
>>Introduce yourself and what project(s) you represent.
> 
> 
> Hi, gang, my name's Schuyler Erle. I co-wrote _Mapping Hacks_ and
> _Google Maps Hacks_ (http://mappinghacks.com/) and have been
> interested in web map tools for a couple of years now.
> 
> At present, I'm working for MetaCarta, helping to develop OpenLayers,
> a BSD licensed JavaScript toolkit for adding dynamic maps to HTML
> pages. My experience with Google Maps has led me to believe _very
> strongly_ that the Open Source Geospatial community would benefit from
> having at least one very simple, server-independent, straight-up
> JavaScript API, one that a non-GIS person might use to build locative
> applications on the Web.  This philosophy is very much in line with
> the design of the Google Maps API, and somewhat in contrast to what's
> been implemented in, say, ka-Map, with its PHP dependency, or
> MapBuilder, with its emphasis on server-side XML configuration and its
> powerful but very complex MVS framework.
> 
> OpenLayers lives at http://www.openlayers.org/ but right now there's
> not a whole lot to see there. We're gearing up for a major code
> release in a couple of weeks, which of course we'll announce here when
> that happens. The code will feature support for the slippy tiled maps
> that folks have come to expect on the Web, via OGC WMS, and some
> support for putting markers on the map and associating events with
> them via the JS API.
> 
> Personally, I don't have much attachment to the OpenLayers code base,
> as it stands. My primary interest is in seeing some kind of library
> with the properties I've enumerated, with the flexibility to have many
> different applications hacked on top. I'd be thrilled to find ways to
> share code with other projects (or infect them with our
> requirements)...  ;-) Also, I have yet to see an Open Source map API
> that isn't total weak sauce in the documentation and QA department --
> and OpenLayers is, as yet, no exception. We gotta fix this, folks!
> 
> On a separate but related note, I want to draw your attention to the
> Public Geospatial Data Committee's efforts to explore ideas for a WMS
> tile caching standard:
> 
>     http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/WMS_Tile_Caching
> 
> I hope that the OSGeo web mapping community will help offer the
> impetus to advance the state of the art in this direction!
> 
> SDE
> 
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