[OpenLayers-Dev] ActionScript3 port of openlayers

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 05:31:22PM +0100, Bouiaw wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to have your advice about implementing openlayers in
> ActionScript3. From my point of view, combining OpenLayers class model,
> ActionScript3 power, AMF3 data services efficiency and Flash vector and 3D
> capabilities may be very exiting.
> 
> I have seen that someone created a project with this goal on Google Code (
> http://code.google.com/p/asopenlayers/), I tried to contact him witout
> success.
> 
> I would like to know if someone has began to work on this on your side ?
> What do you think about an AS3 port of openlayers ?

"Dear gods and powers, please help us!" :) (I'm not a Flash person, can
you tell?)

More seriously, I have no specific Flash knowledge, but I do know that
OpenLayers was designed pretty extensively around the HTML DOM and
access to it. I know this specifically because of the pieces of the HTML
DOM I've had to reimplement in JS to do spidermonkey based testing :)

Looking through the 'asopenlayers' project, I see that AS3 looks much
*less* like Javascript than AS1 (which I've actually written, and
tested, with just a JS interpreter). I believe that AS3 also can't be
built with Open Source tools: it requires a proprietary build chain.

So, I expect that a translation of OpenLayers into AS3 would be more of
a "learning from OpenLayers, implementing in Flash". It seems *possible*
(Though I don't know how possible) that AS1 would actually allow the
usage of some level of shared code; and I would be supportive of finding
ways to use OpenLayers code in more ways. An AS3 project is -- based on
my limitedk nowledge/browsing at this time -- much less interesting to
me personally than an AS1-based project. 

In any case, it would be good to have some active collaboration with the
project. :) 

Best Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta