[mapserver-users] Developing Skins for Mapserver Apps

[Tim Sutton]

Hi Stephen

I think this is a great idea. My demo app at

http://www.wrcgis.co.uk/webmap/ms_teleco/

uses a similar approach. It is a heavily modified version of gmap that
separates the presentation from the map logic. There are independent
files for the legend, page layout, map, help and mapserver logic. It
is all done in php4 and DHTML. I will be releasing the source shortly
for public consumption, so it may form a good starting point for
further refining a skinnable maperver environment. It allows the look
of the site to be changed without it affecting the map functionality
in any way.

I will post a note to the list when the source is packaged up and
ready to be downloaded.

Cheers

Tim


On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

> This started as a reply to Daniel's reply to Re: [mapserver-users] User
> Layer Attributes Enhancement but I think a more generic discussion on
> developing a standard for Mapserver Skins might be appropriate. Assuming
> that some people are interested in pursuing this we could create
> SkinsDevelopment area on Wiki to collaberate the effort.
> 
> I think gmap is a great example of what can be done and I appreciate
> that is has been made available. While looking it over and planning my
> own navigation interface I thought that it would be great for everyone
> if we could make navigation interfaces like "skins." It would be really
> cool of you could drop a "skin" into a directory with a map file and it
> would just work! You might need to run a utility to init the "skin", but
> after that it would be fully functional. There would still be a need to
> customize the interface to deal with non-navigation specific stuff like
> for example at the Candian Endangered Species site, but in general
> building the navigation and basic query should be able to be easily
> defined using a "skin" like approach and an initialization utility.
> Skins could also be writen in both PHP and Perl.
> 
> To accomplish this, you would need to be able to discover what is in a
> map file (doable today) and maybe via the metadata get info on what
> should be exposed via the skin. And if you wanted to use an external
> legend/control like gmap you would need to be able to generate the
> graphics durning the initialization process. This would have to be done
> in a standardized way in the map file so different skins would be able
> to do the discovery.
> 
> I send the following to Steve Lime off list, but maybe I should have
> sent it to the list as we may be closer than I thought:
> 
> ------------------ included mail ---------------------------------
> Subject: Better Mapscript Control of Legends
> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 17:15:42 -0500
> 
> Hi Stephen,
> 
> I wanted to bounce an idea around with you to see what you thought. I
> just started playing with gmap75 and PHP/Mapscript and one of things I
> noticed is that you don't get a whole lot of control over the Legend,
> but wait I'm a little ahead of myself.
> 
> What I would like to be able to do is build a navigation user interface
> that is not dependent on knowing what is in the map file. I like what DM
> Solutions has done with their HTML Legend/Control which combines the
> display of a Legend and the Control to turn the layers on and off.
> 
> Unfortunately their code has to explicitly reference the layers by name
> in the map file, so if you want to move their navigation interface to
> another map file you have to recode all the layers.
> 
> I can get all the layer names via mapscript so I can dynamically
> generate the code to turn layers on/off by their name. What is missing
> is the ability to easily get at the graphics (IE: Legend pieces) either
> at deployment or via mapscript. Integrating the control and the legend
> save screen real estate and simplifies the user interface.
> 
> Now I see that there are some problems, like the graphics change with
> scale, but for a given map file the set of graphics icons is constant
> unless you change the mapfile by editing it or via mapscript so you
> could potentially run a utility to generate all the legend icon pieces
> using some automatic name generation that conbined layer+scale then if
> that name was accessible via mapscript then the mapscript could generate
> a link to it. The idea would be to generate multiple say Road icons if
> there were multiple Road displays based on scale, so you might generate
> road1.gif, road2.gif, etc. Then have an attribute for the layer the
> would return which road?.gif to use for the given map scale being
> generated. This might be easily calculated in mapscript from other info
> so the attribute might not be required.
> 
> There probably is a better way to do this, but I don't think I know
> enough yet. I took a quick look at maplegend.c to see if it might be
> cloned to make a utility to generate all the posible legend icon images.
> I think it might be done without too much trouble, but coordinating that
> names to the scale I'm not so sure about.
> 
> Anyway I think the goal of being able to create modular navigation
> widgets that anyone can easily drop on a mapfile would be a cool idea.
> It would be like "Skins" that other application offer.
> 
> You might have some other ideas which I would be interested in hearing
> about.
> 
> Thank you for your time and for Mapserver it really is great!
> 
> Best regards,
>   -Stephen Woodbridge
> 

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Tim Sutton                          WRc plc
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