[OpenLayers-Users] GeoRSS and Custom Icons

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 03:53:33PM +0200, Eric Lemoine wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Christopher Schmidt
> <crschmidt at metacarta.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 01:54:42PM +0200, Eric Lemoine wrote:
> >> Although i find it weird to use a GML layer with a format different
> >> than GML i agree that it's good to avoid code at the application
> >> level. Thanks Andreas. Eric
> >
> > As Andreas pointed out, this is a flaw in naming. This is simply for
> > 'historical reasons' -- It was named that way early on, before I really
> > knew what I was doing. (It was named, for example, before we had
> > formats, back when it really *was* about GML.)
> >
> > The GML and WFS layers can essentially be thought of two different
> > strategies: GML is a Layer which uses a "Fixed" strategy, and WFS is a
> > Layer which uses a "BBOX" strategy.
> >
> > Both of them are tied to the HTTP Protocol.
> 
> The WFS layer is tied to the "WFS" protocol.

More so than the HTTP protocol, I'll admit; but the entire reason for
the vector behavior work is just that the protocol stuff really isn't
well encapsulated, so we'll just put it this way: "The WFS layer is a
fscking mess" :) 

> > It's unfortunate that they're named this way, but that's one of the
> > things that the vector behavior work is changing: once we've refactored
> > things, we can start creating layers that actually make sense for their
> > names :)
> 
> Ok, but what will we do with the WFS and GML layers? Will we keep them
> with the same names and behaviors to maintain backward compatibility?

I don't know exactly what we'll do: if we can change the underlying
implementation of these to just be simple wrappers around a vector layer
without changing API-supported behavior, that would be preferable:
otherwise, we may have to maintain the existing code. For example, the
WFS layer has support to render with Markers, something that the vector
behavior changes won't give us, so we can't really just dump the
Layer.WFS code that does that and depend on the vector behavior instead.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta