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Subject: 
Re: New World LUG Map demo
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Fri, 28 Mar 2003 14:34:59 GMT
Viewed: 
149 times
  
In lugnet.announce, Todd Lehman writes:

This is fantastic stuff Todd, well done and thanks.  Most of my comments
have already been covered by others but...

Please consider the maps to be an "alpha" release.  Not very much testing
has been done yet, and major functionality is still missing, most notably...

  * the ability to click on a country and zoom the map,
  * the presence of icons or markers denoting organizational focus (trains,
    robotics, general),
  * country names, and
  * readable city names (they're currently too small and often overlap)

And often utterly bonkers...  last time I was in Berks and Hants I didn't
find anywhere called 'Luanda' or 'Alger'! :)

Where do the names come from?  Will it be possible for these to be altered
by agreement amongst admins/curators to ones which best serve the needs of
an area.  Some of the UK naming is bizarre!

One thing you might notice above is that the maps are embedded on an FTX
page.  I designed the map generator so that this would be possible because I
want the ability for these to appear anywhere that they might be convenient,
for example in group sidebars, and for that reason the maps can actually be
rendered at any size

Very good already.  In no time I created the map I'd want to put on the
loc.uk sidebar.  Can there be a way of editing the font size of the labels
on the 'circles of influence' since my map says 'Brickish Ass'!


You might be wondering why the "From" and "To" sections are grayed out.
It's because I haven't implemented that part yet.  What you'll be able to do
is say, "Make me a map of this area that shows all the LEGO events that
happened between this date and that date," or, "Show me all the events that
are coming up in the next three months."  Just for fun I'll probably add a
button you can click that will animate the events in time -- so you'd see
little circles popping up and fading away as time progressed forward.  The
same could be done for the formation of user groups over time.

This will be very useful for me/us.

Also on my to-do list for this:

  * Make a friendly intro page.  The overall resource needs to be as easy
    to use as the current World LUG Map is before it can replace that.
  * Make a page where people can add their own club events (date & location).
  * Make a page where people can request that their club be added.

Do you intend the map to be managed by the admins?  Will this be too big a
job to bear and is there a way/ would you consider farming responsibility
out to e.g. curators?

  * Improve performance of new-map generation in the case of cache misses.
  * Document the FTX syntax used to embed map views on-site.
  * Document the HTML syntax used to embed map views from off-site.
    (You'll be allowed to link directly to the graphical map data file on
    the LUGNET server and easily embed maps in your own web pages.)
  * Investigate possibility of displaying static GIF images for browsers
    that don't support SVG.
  * Investigate other cartographic projections.
Hugely necessary - I can't see AntarcticLUG starting up in the near future!

  * Investigate customization ("skinning") with external XML style sheets.
OK, that's where you lose me and the other less techy people.  What is that
and why would it be useful?

--Todd

All in all, nice one!

Thanks

Psi



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: New World LUG Map demo
 
(...) I think there may be some serious mistakes in the coordinate data of the cities. Hong Kong shows up in Canada! (I think this might be an accidentally negated coordinate.) I'd like to get a better data file. (...) It's from a public domain list (...) (21 years ago, 12-Apr-03, to lugnet.admin.general)

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