[mapguide-users] RE: MapGuide with Openlayers (Searching for Detailed yet Simple Development Examples)

Thu Mar 18 16:17:58 EDT 2010

Thanks for your detailed response! Maybe this should be in the Openlayers
section but it started here so. It is very helpful confirming that I am not
completely clueless. We all want speedy development cycles and at first
glance Openlayers seemed to promise interoperability with MapServer,
MapGuide, ArcGIS and basic WMS. Google, Bing and so on. It's great for
displaying maps, redlining and overlays hands down, don't get me wrong.

Openlayers still is a great hope that we don't have to recode a client side
interface for every map application we build or was that never the end goal?
I guess what I am saying is will we ever be able to use Openlayers to bring
layers in on those systems and make selections to name a few standard
features without huge client side hacks?

Do you see more Openlayers API development for MapGuide and ArcGIS
specifically in the future?

Chris Gountanis | www.mpowerinnovations.com
________________________________________
mPower Innovations
Software Engineer
1051 N Lynndale Drive, Suite 2A, Appleton, WI 54914
T: 920.830-4053 ext. 205 | F: 920.955-4057

From: Paul Spencer [via OSGeo.org]
[mailto:ml-node+4758255-2001994289-98072 at n2.nabble.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 1:05 PM
To: Chris Gountanis
Subject: Re: MapGuide with Openlayers (Searching for Detailed yet Simple
Development Examples)

Chris, 

the simplest MapGuide + OpenLayers example is the one that comes with
OpenLayers in the examples
(http://dev.openlayers.org/releases/OpenLayers-2.8/examples/mapguide.html). 

The problems start when you want to do anything more complicated than
showing a MapDefinition as a layer in this way.   

OpenLayers is most efficient when you use minimal client-side layers, it
really bogs down a browser to display a lot of separate layers.  The
controls that come with OpenLayers assume that each image is a single
entity, so if you want to display and control layers separately, you need to
communicate with the server to get extra information about the layers that
make up a map and to control the display of individual layers in a session
(turn on and off). 

OpenLayers selections are actually vector layers, to work with them you need
to export individual vector features from layers in your MapDefinition and
load them up on the client side. 

A lot of the complexity of Fusion comes from the fundamental differences
between OpenLayers and how MapGuide and MapServer users 'expect' things to
work in a more GIS type application. 

Sorry, this probably hasn't been very helpful in solving your particular
problem.  It just really isn't that easy to do what you are asking,
otherwise I'm sure that the examples would already be out there. 

Cheers 

Paul 

On 2010-03-18, at 12:21 PM, Chris Gountanis wrote: 

> 
> I know the common answer to this is take a look at Fusions 65k lines of
OOP 
> inheritance rich code. If you are not used to JavaScript programming with 
> higher level OOP concepts on a daily basis it can be a pain to reverse 
> engineer. I will be checking out Fiddler later today as suggested by 
> zspitzer in another post. I assume this is why there are ZERO simple 
> break-down development examples on how to use Openlayers with MapGuide or 
> ArcGIS. 
> 
> 
> I think what people including myself are looking in simple in-line 
> JavaScript: 
> - Bring in a MapGuide Map showing separate layers as it was designed in 
> Studio. Bringing in a map from MapGuide and having it show up in
OpenLayers 
> as a single overlay is not very useful for most MapGuide developers. 
> - Allow built-in Openlayers selection methods on the layers that allow 
> selections nothing fancy just show results in message box or something
along 
> those lines. 
> - Show tool tips using MapGuide built-in tool tip settings. 
> - Show some legend examples like Fusion but more of a simple JavaScript
for 
> beginners... nothing pretty just functional examples. 
> 
> 
> To the point question: Is OpenLayers and MapGuide a priority or will it 
> always be more for WMS overlay in general for max built-in functionality?
I 
> need to evaluate for our development projects and right now I am
personally 
> at a loss for MapGuide and ArcGIS with OL as the base client. I really
want 
> to get on board here and admit my advanced JavaScript is lacking but is 
> there anything to help us get started with simple proof of concepts? 
> 
> 
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