[Javacavemaps-developers] volunteer time

[Larry G. <jav...@ya...>]

Also has anyone considered that I'm voluteering my time to create task and specifications and answer emails reguarding assigning of task. I'll also be doing the work in creating release files. I have to take my time to add people to the project and email them. I also take my time to alter permissions for this and that. I realize some of this can be automated. I wish sourceforge would make a Platform independent GUI tool to do the same things their web interface does, maybe with scripting of some kind. Or better yet have some way that ANT could connect and work SF task. Speaking of that I hope to begin using ANT to automate some things a little later on.

Anyway I have 50 hours a week free for thinking maybe, some of that for studying. None of that for coding or web interface work.   So after about 60 hours a week on my job I have some time for coding and web interface work.  BTW I just noticed DocBook has tags for the "view" portion of programming, it has tags for "OOP" and tags for "API" as well as tags for"command line" work. It appears to have great indexing capabilities, but I don't see anything about table of contents yet. I has some interesting "list" alternatives compared with HTML. Yes DOCBOOK has 400  tags roughly. It can be totally converted to HTML or PDF and maybe a few other formats.

I wish I had some kind of way I could poll the developers on the project. This would make for a slightly more democratic situation.  

Oh note that I didn't mention the use of Random Access files. Using RAF is reinventing the Database wheel.  However we have a great plugin capablity already designed which is JDBC. Anyone who loves database work could write their database and provide a JDBC driver if they really wanted to (not for me at this time). If someone wants to do a OpenGL plugin view of this project, then we will give them repository space.  

Oh  and this is what I meant about heavy database work; The storing of cave information including, location, directions to the cave, scientific information, information reguading safety, other interesting statistical information. For example location can be recorded using, Gas Well coordinates which are Township, Range, Section, Feet from East,North,SouthWest section lines. Location can also be Longitude Lattitude. Seems like I recal maybe one other method of getting location as well.  

A cave leads database. I have forgotten what was included in this but its mostly about who gave you the lead, contact information for those giving the lead, and information they may have given, including directions to the cave or its general location and other facts about the cave.  Its for the detective work in tracking down cave locations. Believe it or not the best method for getting lead information is to door knock in the communities that live near the caves. The database might contain the entire description for the vector graphics app that would display a map. The database could also contain survey information as an alternative to the use of XML or flat files.  We could also use XML to store the data for the Vector Graphics map. 

The reason Vector Graphics is so popular for cave mapping is that its very art like.  CAD software while good for aiding in getting the person info about line plots or in printing line plots is too mechanical looking for cave map generation. Pixel graphics software becomes too much work overall. Vector Graphics software offers great layering capabilities which aid in the drafting by allowing scans of in cave sketches to be scanned underlaid.  If we get to this point, and I think is dreamy right now, but I will try to write up specidifactions based on the features of Xara X that cavers seem to like and use. One which may be complicated to code is blending. I don't even want to explain that concept right now.












 Larry Gray
la...@ar...