Another couple of ideas

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Anthony,

On Thursday 10 July 2008 22:37, Anthony Lenton wrote:
> I'd really like to see add a couple of characteristics from
> MapServer's data model be worked in to Thuban, namely:
>
>  - The ability to set a max/min scale to a layer, so that it isn't
> shown outside of that range.

For some layers this certainly makes sense, though maybe we should have
some function that calculates this level of detail without fix settings,
because the settings will depend a lot on the output device.
(E.g. a layer that cannot be shown on screen with 72 dpi, might easily be seen
in a few dots on a 600 lpi printer.)

>  - The notion of a style (with many styles to a class) to allow to
> draw lines with a border, dashed lines with a continuous background,
> and several other pretty things.

We did not add this before out of two ideas:
a) we wanted to avoid making Thuban a layout application as vector
   drawing applications usually do a better job at this.
   This is why I came up with the printing pipeline
	Thuban -> MapSVG -> Vector drawing application
b) For trying to explore data, some simpler drawings might
   be better (we do not know for sure).

Technically I believe that the old wxWidgets drawing engine might also pose 
some limits on what could be done easily. I read somewhere that I would have
a new system, but did not followup up when this was included.

Also there is much more computing power today so doing better drawings should 
be fine.

If you need those features, by all means, give them a coding attempt. :)

Best Regards,
BErnhard

-- 
Managing Director - Owner: www.intevation.net      (Free Software Company)
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