[Geowanking] a modest proposal for google maps

[Tyler Mitchell]

I share your philosophy James.  I haven't touched GML 3 at all, but had heard folks (like you) complain about its complexity.  Many claims to fame for the open source geospatial apps worlds is the open standards they support, the more specs you support the better for everybody.  I don't think that having any new standards (no matter how open they are) is helpful for anybody.  A good effort toward using "recognised" open specifications, ie. GML, will reap larger adoption rewards.

As complexity grows for communicating data, you'll find you are building GML anyway - I'm convinced of that.

Tyler

----- Original Message -----
From: James Macgill <jmacgill at gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2005 10:47 am
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] a modest proposal for google maps

> > How do we share *simple* map information, like the kind that the 
> google maps
> > API supports, basically markers, marker data (content), and line 
> overlays?> GML?  Too complicated at first blush.  
> Everything else... not complicated enough at second or third blush...
> (oh, your not using the same CRS as me?, hay points are nice, what
> about lines... now polygons... now lets put some attributes in with
> this... and styling, and ...)
> 
> GML too comlex? yes it is in its full scope, 2.1.2 is just about
> managable and GML 3.0 in full is too complex for almost everybody.
> 
> But and its a big BUT, if you have a specific application in mind, and
> you spend a little time comming up with a schema for your problem that
> is NOT complex (i.e. without lots of substituon groups and nested
> feature membership and cubic spline curves) then GML can be very easy.
> Add to that the ability to push data in and out of a transactional
> WFS (like geoserver) and you are up and running with a lot of power
> and flexibility.  You can filter the data, do spatial queries (dwithin
> with a limit is VERY handy for gmaps markers if you want the ones near
> the center of the map but without getting more than a hundred or so
> results...)
> 
> James
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