dBox / dLegend

[Steve Lime]

At this point the documentation is pretty sparce, but the demo shows all the options
at the moment. We developed that capability for a specific project so there will likely
need to be extensions.

The metadata serves 3 primary functions:

1) it allows the creation of what we call metagroups to collect similarly themed layers or
groups

In the demo the following metadata does that:

  dlegend_metagroups "foreground,background"
  dlegend_foreground_layers_and_groups "pls,lakes,dlgstln2,cities,roads"
  dlegend_background_layers_and_groups "drgs,lulc_90cenim3"

The first line tells the parser what groups there are (and what order to render themin the
legend) and the next two lines define membership.

2) is allows the naming of elements that can't be named with normal MapServer map
elements. Obviously metagroups since they are not MapServer constructs cannot be
named. Nor can MapServer groups or layers with more than one named class. In those
cases we name those elements with metadata:

  dlegend_foreground_name "Foreground Layers:"
  dlegend_background_name "Background Layers:"
  dlegend_lulc_90cenim3_name "Landuse/Landcover"
  dlegend_pls_name "Public Land Survey"
  dlegend_roads_name "Roads"

3) we can alter the legend control element type used for a metagroup, either a checkbox
or a radio button. Yahoo actually mimics that behavior with DHTML and css but the effect
is the same as using a form.

  dlegend_background_element "radio"

That's really all there is to it. All other information such as class names, icons and scale limits
are picked up from the regular mapfile structures.

We have immediate needs to make a couple of extensions such as allowing nested 
metagroups and setting the default status (open/closed) of a metagroup.

Let me know if this helps and/or if you need more detail. We can post this then as documentation
for the MapScript piece of dlegend...

Steve

>>> Chip Hankley <Chip.Hankley at RMTINC.COM> 6/1/2006 1:21:25 PM >>>
I'm using dBox-0.9a1. Is there documentation for how the METADATA
elements in the WEB section of the map file control the legend? I'm just
trying to get a better understanding of what the options are, how it
works, etc.
 
Great interface, btw!
 
Thanks!

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