[OSGeo-Standards] "OGC(R) Approves KML as Open Standard"

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 03:47:39PM -0700, jo at frot.org wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 03:19:00PM -0700, Jody Garnett wrote:
> > Piergiorgio Cipriano wrote:
> > >http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/857
> > It is more interesting how this is picked up in the mainstream press:
> > http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080414-googles-kml-map-markup-language-now-an-official-standard.html
> 
> I am trying to bite my tongue but have to ask: how soon can we expect
> to see OGC's A-Liaison status used to fast-track KML through ISO so to
> be marketed at the expense of GML? 
> 
> And what will happen to poor old SLD then? (So GeoServer uses it to
> style KML but does anyone else?)

OpenLayers can.

SLD and KML solve two different problems.

 * KML: Feature level styling. "This feature is a 3px wide red line."
 * SLD: Rule based styling. "At this zoom level, anything which is of
   type 'road' is red and 3px wide."

KML doesn't offer enough to seriously replace SLD. I see the future for
SLD as growing brighter with support in OpenLayers: My hope is that our
next release will take styling to the level that users are actually
doing it via GUI tools. 

They will then be able to *export* their data as KML (with styling
information at the feature level): data users will be able to see it
styled as the creator intended, but GIS clients will get the power of
multiple scale levels and the complex rules that can be delivered
between GIS-knowledgable clients. 

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta