Hello SMW devs...
I'm the developer of the Semantic Layers extension (
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Layers ), which you may
have seen via my post on semediawiki-users. If not, its an extension that
integrates the OpenLayers web mapping API with SMW. It has a number of
interesting features, including a mechanism to easily group and display
placemarks (wiki articles with Type:Geographic coordinate attributes in
them), ways to define placemark, image overlay, and tiled imagery layers in
the wiki, and--most pertinent at the moment--the ability to write a
SMW-style query and have the results returned displayed on a map.
I'm writing for a couple of reasons: First, to see if anyone on the list has
tried out my extension, and/or had a look at its code, and might have any
feedback for me. I'd be glad to hear any suggestions or constructive
criticism.
Specifically, I am interested in feedback on the way I used SMW in the
back-end. Namely, I don't access the SQL database directly--I use SMW's
query parser. Unfortunately, to do this, I had to make a copy of the
SMWInlineQuery class and add my own method (getResult) to it, based on
getHTMLResult (extending the class didn't work, since key members are
private instead of protected). My "enhanced" version of the class allows me
to pass along a query to SMW and programmatically iterate through the
results.
Along those lines, I am curious if a similar capability the one I've created
is forthcoming in SMW 1.0? Or has it been considered?
Additionally, another feature I'd like to add to my extension in the future
is a KML and/or WFS export capability for placemarks defined by users in the
wiki. If you're familiar with KML, it has a feature called "Super Overlays",
which allows for progressive disclosure as you zoom in--basically, in Google
Earth, when farther away from the surface you might see fewer placemarks,
but when closer, more would appear--it's a way to control the density of
information on the screen. To accomplish this, however, would require the
capability to query the geographic data based on a bounding box--e.g. return
all articles with placemarks in the rectangle having lower-left corner 0,0
and upper-right corner 45,45 (degrees). Currently, in v0.7, geographic
coordinates stored in the database are not stored in a way that would seem
to make this practical. Has this type of feature (querying based on the
location of geographic coordinate attributes) been discussed/planned for 1.0?
It would be a great boon to my extension and I imagine many other types of
applications.
Again, any comments appreciated.
Thanks!
-Matt Williamson
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