SLD editing with OpenLayers

Accommodating for SLDs should not be a big job. I have hacked in solutions for other frameworks including GoogleMaps WMS API. However, I'm new to OpenLayers and find the caching very good for WMS layers and so want to use it as an alternative to my GoogelMaps application. See http//www.cubewerx.com.au/DemoDrapes.html. This application useds SLDs to render the thematic layer so I need the SLD feature urgently. Is anyone working on this if not I can have a go but I have not been able to download the source code - I gues that's another problem. Anyway, an update would be great.

Cheers, Brad.....

Replying to cholmes@openplans.org:

Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) is an open standard that specifies the 'style' of a map, the colors and thickness of lines and what it looks like at various zoom levels and all. Many WMS's support SLD, which allows a user to pass their SLD file, _their_ definition of what the map should look like, and let the server render it. In many ways this is the next step in the evolution of truly allowing users control of their mapping environments - you don't have to see things as Google decided, you can have a basemap that emphasizes different aspects of the data by portraying with different visuals. It would be awesome if openlayers supported this. Even just basics, letting a user make roads thicker or change the colors. But advanced functionality would be great, as a choice for how people actually create their map. They could load up boring looking layers, and then openlayers could make it look quite nice. Ideally would play well with min/maxScaleDenominator, part of the SLD spec, so that each zoom level would have it's own style. This could make for a cool open source type movement around styling of maps, in addition to actually modifying the data. Good SLD's could be passed around, modified for different base datasets. Even further it could use filters to really dig in to the data (make the color of the map related to the number of unemployed divided by total number of people - so percentage of unemployed), and even do theming (divide in to quantiles). Perhaps someday we'll take a crack at it, it's non-trivial to do this, but euzuro wanted me to stick it in track

Replying to openlayers: I have just downloaded the OL source code to see how hard this would be to implement. I discovoured that OL already supports SLD rendering. All you need to do is replace the layer: parameter with an SLD: parameter as per the spec and it happily returns the overlay as a dynamically rendered layer. See my demo at http://openlayers.cubewerx.getmyip.com/apps/test3.html. Maybe this should be documented as a feature.

Cheers, Brad.... brad@cubewerx.com.au

Accommodating for SLDs should not be a big job. I have hacked in solutions for other frameworks including GoogleMaps WMS API. However, I'm new to OpenLayers and find the caching very good for WMS layers and so want to use it as an alternative to my GoogelMaps application. See http//www.cubewerx.com.au/DemoDrapes.html. This application useds SLDs to render the thematic layer so I need the SLD feature urgently. Is anyone working on this if not I can have a go but I have not been able to download the source code - I gues that's another problem. Anyway, an update would be great. Cheers, Brad..... Replying to cholmes@openplans.org:

Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) is an open standard that specifies the 'style' of a map, the colors and thickness of lines and what it looks like at various zoom levels and all. Many WMS's support SLD, which allows a user to pass their SLD file, _their_ definition of what the map should look like, and let the server render it. In many ways this is the next step in the evolution of truly allowing users control of their mapping environments - you don't have to see things as Google decided, you can have a basemap that emphasizes different aspects of the data by portraying with different visuals. It would be awesome if openlayers supported this. Even just basics, letting a user make roads thicker or change the colors. But advanced functionality would be great, as a choice for how people actually create their map. They could load up boring looking layers, and then openlayers could make it look quite nice. Ideally would play well with min/maxScaleDenominator, part of the SLD spec, so that each zoom level would have it's own style. This could make for a cool open source type movement around styling of maps, in addition to actually modifying the data. Good SLD's could be passed around, modified for different base datasets. Even further it could use filters to really dig in to the data (make the color of the map related to the number of unemployed divided by total number of people - so percentage of unemployed), and even do theming (divide in to quantiles). Perhaps someday we'll take a crack at it, it's non-trivial to do this, but euzuro wanted me to stick it in track

We now have an SLD format with read support (r5520). I see justification in adding a ticket for write support. I also see how it might make sense to add a control that lets you pick colors and line weights. However, I think that a full blown SLD editor would work better next to OL instead of inside it. Just to lighten our burden, I'm going to close this ticket. I hope to work on a stand-alone style editor soon. If there are pieces of that that belong in OL, I'll open tickets for those. Or if others want to do this in OL, please reopen this ticket.