Another couple of ideas

[Anthony Lenton]

Hello Bernhard,

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 6:04 AM, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 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.)

Hm, true... though those changes in ouput-resolution should already
bring along other problems, for example a line that looks neat at
2px-wide on the screen will look real scrawny and thin on a high-res
printer.  How are you working around those problems currently?

>>  - 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.

I think the wx map renderer is an *excellent* piece of software, I'm
impressed at just how fast it works.
But yes, maybe at some point it would be good to start using a more
featureful backend.

While talking about features that probably need a major rewrite, let
me add these to the list :-)
- Antialias
- Line width zooming (showing lines wider when you get closer)
- Rotated labels

> 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. :)

Wee :-D

-- 
Anthony Lenton
Except - The good guys in software development
http://except.com.ar