Upcoming Press Release for Mapbuilder GML Viewer and Mapbuilder Release 1.5rc1

[Cameron Shorter]

I'm planning to put out 2 press releases, hopefully before Christmas:

1. I've created a GML Viewer release based on Mapbuilder, and sponsored 
by the OGC.
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAP/GML+Viewer+1.0

I'd be interested to know if people consider this to be something that 
should be distributed through OSGeo channels.


2. Mapbuilder is about to put out a new release. I haven't put a release 
together yet, but it will be based on the CHANGES file which states:


mapbuilder-lib-1.5-rc1
==========================
This Mapbuilder release adds a string of new features and developments to
the Mapbuilder core. While the core Mapbuilder functionality remains stable,
the new features should still be considered alpha; some new interfaces still
might change, the features have not been extensively tested and there are
still outstanding bugs.

Some of the new features include:

Compression:
The released version of Mapbuilder is now bundled up into one file and
compressed into about 1/10 of its original size.

OWS Context:
Mapbuilder previously stored its LayerList in a Web Map Context (WMC) 
document.
A WMC describes a list of WMS layers. The latest Mapbuilder supports the
OGC's draft OWS Context specification which extends the WMC to include:
WFS layers, GeoRSS layers, GML Layers.

The OWS Context is rendered by the new MapPane2 and MapPaneOL widgets.
In the next release, we plan to deprecate MapPane2 and MapPane and 
replace them
by MapPaneOL.

Vector rendering using SVG/VML:
We now have SVG and VML rendering using MapPane and MapPaneOL. This 
rendering
is much faster than the previous WZGraphics library, however older browsers
will still need to revert the the WZGraphics library.

OpenLayers used for Rendering:
The MapPaneOL widget now uses OpenLayers for rendering. This means we can
easilly tap into OpenLayer's support for numerous map providers.
Eg: Tiled WMS, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSN Maps, WFS, GML, etc.
We still haven't integrated the Mapbuilder tools with OpenLayer tools 
yet, but
that is expected to be completed for the next release.

SLD Editor:
We now have a Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) Editor example. A SLD describes
whether you map features should be rendered as red fat lines or blue thin
lines and you can apply styles to maps.

GeoRSS:
We have some GeoRSS examples which include rendering vector layers SVG/VML.



-- 
Cameron Shorter
http://cameron.shorter.net