Re: [wxperl-users] Handling a large zoomable image (world map)

[Andreas R. <ar...@rc...>]

On Tuesday, 27. June 2006 13:01 Ed W wrote:
> Anyone have any suggestions on how to structure an application that
> will center around a zoomable map of the whole world.  The basic idea
> is to show weather patterns at various regions, but the user is to be
> able to zoom in quite tightly onto a specific area and then scroll
> around at that zoom level (think google maps, but for offline use and
> not so detailed and with a weather overlay)
>
> I'm going to ignore memory usage for the moment, but this is
> something of an issue when you are handling 40MB image files. 
> Clearly the most desirable structure is to be able to tile the image
> in some way and then load in only the parts of the image which are
> relevant at that time (plus some overlap to help with scrolling.
>
> Also the overlay images for weather arrows could be quite large (but
> are also vector shapes basically).  I could draw these on the current
> viewport, or pre-prepare them.  They will also animate with time
> though so again this needs to be handled in memory efficient manner.
>
> Any suggestions on how to approach this using wxperl?
>

Have you looked at PDL, the "Perl Data Language"? PDL could be used for 
the behind-the-scenes data manipulation, and wxperl for the interface 
to the user.

PDL is an excellent package for handling large amounts of vector- or 
array-based data - convenient and as fast as any numerics application. 
Check out the web page at http://pdl.perl.org/, or the success stories 
at http://pdl.perl.org/nifty/index_en.html

Because PDL is perl as well as wxperl, it may be possible to connect 
both packages in a sensible way, without losing platform-independency.

HTH,

Andreas