[OpenLayers-Dev] Styles Framework question

[Andreas Hocevar]

Hi Eric,

Eric Lemoine wrote:
> I have a general question regarding the Styles Framework. We have
> classes such as OpenLayers.Style, OpenLayers.Filter, OpenLayers.Rule,
> etc. Tell me if I'm wrong but these classes have been built with SLD
> in mind, so they follow the SLD spec. Can we image extending these
> classes and going beyond SLD? Or do we want to strictly stick to SLD?
>   

OpenLayers.Style was designed with the goal represent an SLD UserStyle
as good as possible, same for OpenLayers.Rule. The latter has currently
the shortcoming of allowing only one symbolizer of each type, because of
the symbolizer hash it uses. For OpenLayers 3.0, we should change this
to a symbolizers array. And finally, we have nothing yet to represent a
FeatureTypeStyle.

OpenLayers.Filter can also be used outside the styles framework, and
represents OGC filters.

Now to answer your question: Yes, the design goal was to support SLD.
But I don't see a reason why all those classes should not be extended to
support features beyond SLD and OGC filters (although I cannot think of
any right now).

Regards,
Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Hocevar
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org/
Expert service straight from the developers.