KML anyone

[Steve Lime]

Hal: Sounds cool. Can you summarize the extent of your hacks? Perhaps a sample URL or two? I'm assuming you added a KML output option to the WFS engine (alongside GML and GML3), and a mapkml.c. Are you pulling style information from MapServer style objects?

Thinking about it you could handle most of the configuration via metadata:

  'kml_z_item'        'elevation' 
  'kml_style'           '<style><linestyle><color>7fff0000</color></linestyle></style>'
  or
  'kml_style_item'   'style'

I guess I need to read a bit more about KML to comment more. I've got the spec in my office but haven't thumbed through it. 

Another idea was to produce KML using standard MapServer query templates and the [shpxy...] tag. The styling information would live in the templates rather than in the mapfile.

Steve

>>> Hal Eden <haleden at COLORADO.EDU> 02/17/06 1:02 PM >>>
hi, i've been hacking around for some demos here and came up with a  
version that will generate KML for polygons (based on the GML code),  
which allows me to specify a WFS url in google earth and overlay  
shapes onto the terrain.

it's pretty quick and dirty (for example it is hardwired to use  
either ELEVATION or ROOFELEV attributes in our shapefiles to  
determine the z-coordinate), but it shows the concept.

my questions:

	is this useful for anyone else?
	how might it fit into the bigger picture? is there any movement toward
		3D data from mapserver?
	how might extension into WFS options be best approached? (e.g., if i
		 want to specify in the query what attribute to use for the z- 
coordinate?)

any feedback welcome

hal