

Polymaps - A JavaScript Library for Image and Vector-tiled Maps  - mgunes
http://www.polymaps.org/

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DamonOehlman
Nice thread guys. In terms of a couple of other alternative mapping libraries,
I can point towards a couple in addition to Polymaps. By alternative I guess I
mean something that is not currently ready for mainstream consumption -
unapologetic disregard for no IE6 (nor IE7 or IE8 in reality) support or
attempting to support browsers that aren't adopting forward thinking standards
such as SVG / HTML5. I will preface this by saying I am actually pulling one
of these together so I might be a little biased in how cool I think tech like
this is (Polymaps included).

First off you have a library called Cartagen (<http://cartagen.org/>) which is
a very ambitious project indeed and does move towards what simon below
suggested in terms of actually rendering without the need for image tiles.
Well worth a look.

Next, you have the project I have been working on (opensource, MIT licensed,
etc) which I have called Tile5 (<http://tile5.org/>). In terms of GIS feature
completeness, it really doesn't compare with the Polymaps or more mature
technologies such as OpenLayers - yet. My focus has been to date to create a
really nice feeling library for web mapping (mobile touch support, inertial
scrolling, easing animations, etc) as my goal was to compete with native maps
on mobile - ambitious, I know.

I'd certainly welcome feedback and input regarding Tile5, but would also
recommend checking out Cartagen as well to see what else is possible using the
likes of Canvas and SVG.

Happy to talk more about this, but obviously don't want to spam the thread.

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abp
The word "maps" on the start page is actually a map. :)

You can zoom and drag the map around, in the letters.

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wlievens
How does this compare to OpenLayers? Does it follow the OGC specs such as WMS,
WFS, etc?

Edit: okay, it does vector tiling. That's very nice. OpenLayers' vector
support scales badly so this might help.

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ez77
I have another question on that regard. How do you "put it all together"?
Specially if you want to host your maps locally. Mapserver, Openlayers, OSM
data, QGIS, ... I don't know where to start.

Any good references? (I tried google. I will myself check out
<http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/MappingYourData> , but the more the better.)

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altxwally
Here is a nice tutorial on how set up a server to render tiles with Mapnik:

<http://weait.com/content/build-your-own-openstreetmap-server>

If you want to serve tiles you would then have to take a look at mod_tile:
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mod_tile>

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ez77
Great. Thank you for the pointers.

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simon_kun
I especially like the tiled approach to data streaming that Polymaps
implements, though I wonder if it's inefficient if you have really large
polygons and a small grid (I'm assuming that if a polygon intersects the grid
it'll be streamed rather than being chopped up).

Get ready for all these client side 2D mapping libraries to get a big speed
bump with the onset of HW-accelerated Canvas/SVG rendering.

The online mapping world currently dependent on tiling to get literally
_anything_ done. It would be nice to see some variety.

Maybe the ability to handle more data faster will spur innovation in
lightweight GIS data messaging formats.

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themanr
> Polymaps is a free JavaScript library for making dynamic, interactive maps
> in modern web browsers.

Is the browser support documented somewhere? I can't find it.

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DamonOehlman
Native SVG support would be required, so the likes of Chrome, Safari, Firefox,
Opera and IE9 would all work. On mobile any webkit based browser should also
work quite nicely.

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wmblaettler
Testing on my iPod Touch in Safari, it does not seem to work.

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strebler
Nice project! We put something similar together earlier this year using GSV
and Raphael, but this is pretty sweet (too bad it wasn't around 9 months ago
:)

Although it does feel like SVG/images are still not quite as snappy to drag
when compared to just regular images in the browser DOM (which is why we did a
hybrid).

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elblanco
I'm surprised ESRI doesn't show up more often. Their tools are de factor
standards in many many markets.

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msy
OT but the phrase you're looking for is the latin _de facto_ .

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elblanco
ha! typo. Thanks for the correction. That's what I get for typing without
coffee.

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henrymazza
Really good! Somebody knows if there's a more simple implementation to exhibit
something like a building project? (limited space with a great zoom
possibility).

The maps implementations don't seams to fit for this purpose.

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wlievens
Excellent remark. The demos are things that typically work just fine with
tiled (e.g. WMS) raster images rather than vector data. It would be more
interesting to see the vector aspect come to life.

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BenSchaechter
I've been doing quite a bit of work with SVG maps in Raphael and I have to say
that relative to that, building maps is dead simple with this (and renders
amazingly quickly).

However, I'm having a pretty tough time getting this stuff to interact
dynamically. Do you have any examples where you're interacting with the maps
with javascript (i.e. changing colors, etc.)

All in all, awesome work, though.

