[OpenLayers-Users] native kml support

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 07:07:55PM -0600, MilesTogoe wrote:
> since kml is now an open standard, are there any projects working on 
> native kml rendering in OpenLayers (ie without having to connect to 
> Google with their api keys,etc)?   There seems to be an abundance of 
> rendering options: KML, OL vector drawing, SVG, ... and it would be 
> helpful to standardize more on one. 

  http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/KMLParser.html
  http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/kml-layer.html
  http://dev.openlayers.org/apidocs/files/OpenLayers/Format/KML-js.html
  http://docs.openlayers.org/library/layers#gml
  http://crschmidt.net/mapping/kml

It's not clear to me why you describe KML as a 'rendering option', or
why you seperate "OL vector drawing" and "SVG".

KML is a serialization format for geographic data with styling
information. OpenLayers has support for parsing this format -- as well
as many others. OpenLayers typically parses this information into Vector
Features, which can then be drawn -- depending on the application, and
the browser, in one of VML, SVG, or Canvas, using the Renderer
framework.

These are all components of a set of tools for interacting with
serialized geography and turning it into an interactive map in a
browser. "Picking one" is like saying "We should pick one: HTTP, HTML,
or Javascript" -- they're all different components of a stack needed to 
make things happen.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta