Re: [ZMapServer-Developers] Archetypes wrapper products for ZCO

[Kai <kai...@mb...>]

Hi

I've been working on my ZCO based Plone mapping product also and I
thought I'd share some of my work also. I'm working towards having the
code base in a releasable state and will put up a demo site also in the
near future. I'll let you know.

Here are some of the background and currently available features that
you might find useful in your own projects. The product is called
PrimaGIS (named after the family of products at the company I work for)
and will be released under the GPL licence.

PrimaGIS is originally based on the PloneMap project
(http://plonemap.makina-corpus.org/) which in turn uses the older
ZMapServer product. Currently some of the exellent ideas from PloneMap
are retained, but the code has been modified heavily and I've added many
new features. PrimaGIS works with PCL/ZCO and is not ZMapServer
compatible.

We use Plone and Archetypes heavily in our development and the main idea
behind PrimaGIS is to provide a spatial extension to arbitrary
Archetypes based objects. The idea is to have the available maps
integrate nicely in our existing Plone sites as part of the content, so
PrimaGIS is more of an extension than a full featured mapping
application.

The use model is such that all low-level technical configuration of the
maps (ZCO side and PrimaGIS initialization) is done by system
administrators. After this, site (content) administrators, who might not
be technically oriented, may add content to the map by simply clicking
with the mouse with (almost) the same ease as editing other content.

The way PrimaGIS works is that a location on the map is represented by a
proxy object. Currently there is only GeoArchetypesProxy, which uses the
Archetypes Reference mechanism for referencing AT objects.
GeoArchetypesProxy knows only it's location on the map and the objects
it refers to, so it is very simple.

At a lower level PrimaGis defines data layers that implement ZCO
interfaces (IFeatureStoreProxy, ILayerProxy) allowing it to interoperate
directly with ZCO. These data layers contain the proxy objects.

The main features of PrimaGIS are following:
      * Many-to-many mappings between arbitrary Archetypes based objects
        and map locations (GeoArchetypesProxy). A single Archetypes
        object may be located on multiple maps and/or multiple locations
        and a single location on map may refer to multiple Archetypes
        objects.
      * Context-sensitive portlet for showing relevant spatial
        information for Archetypes objects (links to maps that refer to
        the object)
      * Background communication using XmlHttpRequest for refreshing map
        imagery to avoid reloading whole pages.
      * User editable map content
      * Info-on-map using JavaScript popups with the overlib-library.
        Moving on location on the map will popup a small window showing
        the Title and Description of the referred object(s).
      * Rubberband zooming (not 100% IE proof, any help appreciated
        here)
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It's hard to give a clear picture of the product in just an email, but
I'm working towards moving the code to a publicly accessible repository
and setting up the demo site so if anyone is interested you could take a
look.

I've noticed that the people on this list have varying needs and ideas
for a ZCO/Plone based mapping solution, but I believe we could benefit a
lot from sharing the ideas and code here.

cheers,
Kai H=E4nninen

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Kai H=E4nninen                  mobile:+358-44-541 9567
Software engineer             www.mbconcert.fi
MB Concert Ky                 kai...@mb...