[OpenLayers-Dev] WFS Layer, Vector Merge

[Christopher Schmidt]

This is my final email for the night (and probably for a couple days on
OL: I'm only writing this today because illness has kept me up all night
after sleeping all day.)

== WFS Layer == 

Renaming the WFS layer is no longer neccesary.

As Schuyler pointed out (rightly), we had decided that a featureClass
determines how the feature is rendered. In the case of Vectors, we can't
change the features the parser gets back (at the moment), but we can
just use that as a fallback. If the default Feature Class was being
used, then the layer will be a vector layer -- if there is no
featureClass on the layer, that is our fallback state. If there is a
featureClass, the old markers-style layer is used instead. This
maintains API compatibility.

There have been a couple other changes to the WFS layer: it got a lot of
love it really deserved. It's now a single untiled layer (instead of
being tiled, which only kind of works for points). If you want more
points, you should up the points served by your WFS server.

API hasn't changed at all. The old Owls WFS demo works again, just as it
did before, displaying markers for points from the layer.

== Vector Merge == 

I think this was the last blocker for the vector merge. The
MouseDefaults and MouseToolbar changes have happened, the renderers all
work, and the WFS layer has been restored. Before release, we need to
make sure there is more complete test coverage, and do more testing with
single file builds, as well as creating a couple of updated build
profiles to let people get back to the equivilant OpenLayers to the
pre-vector branch if they choose to. Because the additions to the core 
code are minor -- tiny, even -- the vector branch should be a relatively
low impact merge. I think my previous email, which pointed out that only
5 existing classes have had any modifications at all, is ample to prove
this :)

I've kept the branch up to date with trunk as best as possible.
Hopefully this will lead to a smooth merge process.

If you have concerns about the merging of the vector branch back to
trunk, please voice them now. We've added a lot of code, but I believe
we've done it in such a way as to be unobtrusive. If you want more
information about what exactly has changed, you can take a look at the
complete patch to changes in Javascript functionality:

http://trac.openlayers.org/attachment/ticket/46/vector.patch

This is an svn diff against everything in lib/ on trunk vs. vector-2.4.

Please express opinions, positive or negative. 

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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