[mapserver-dev] RFC: GMaps API for mapserv

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 1:07 PM, Stephen Woodbridge
> <woodbri at swoodbridge.com> wrote:
>>  It seems that the meta-tiling and labeling issues will need to be addressed
>> eventually, so I think some discussion of how they would be done from a
>> design point of view should be undertaken. If these can not be easily solved
>> in this architecture then that might indicate a problem.
> 
> Metatiling implies caching, since you'll necessarily be producing way
> more tiles for each request than you need, you should store the spares
> for the future. And I don't think we want to go there. At least, some
> folks don't want to go there.

Yes, I agree with the fact the metatiling is out of scope. I think the 
point that I did not make so clear is that assuming someone wants to do 
metatiling, say using some script or tilecache or whatever. Is there 
anything in the implementation or design that would prevent one from 
generating metatiles and chopping them up via a script and storing them 
somewhere outside of mapserver? If yes, is removing that within the 
scope of things or not?

-Steve

>>  I think a nature question that OpenLayers users might ask is will this work
>> with open layers? Yes I know it is more focused on the Google-API users, but
>> will it work? would it provide any benefits that I don't already have with
>> other layer providers in OL. So just a paragraph addressing this would be
>> helpful regardless of the answers.
> 
> Chris has answered in the affirmative, which is nice.
> 
>>  Do you need a section to discuss other ways to achieve this? Other
>> solutions that might be generally applicable or not that you looked at and
>> through out for one reason or another.
> 
> I suppose. Like WMS, it's possible to achieve this just by proxying
> the ordinary mapserver API behind a script to re-write the parameters.
>  You can achieve the RFC effect with TileCache, and as a bonus you get
> not only request re-writing but also a cache!
> 
> However, like WMS, also, the simplicity of saying "deploy mapserver,
> press go" argues for a built-in capability.  I'm not sure Mapserver
> has really articulated a policy around API proliferation.  There are
> certainly many ways to achieve the same result.
> 
> We could do a slightly more elabourate API, like the Worldwind one,
> which would allow us to support a few more clients out of the same end
> point.  (Chris, note that with interface=map we get top-to-bottom
> ordering of the tiles and interface=worldwind we get the cartesian
> order, so we can serve both from the Worldwind API).
> 
>>  Great start on this Paul.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Paul
> 
>>  -Steve W
>>