Christopher Schmidt wrote:
Tiles are one way of thinking about it, but I think that everything else
you say actually doesn't speak to 'tiles', but instead to 'data OpenLayers
can read'. If a service can provide a WMS layer, why do you need tiles? You
just need something that OpenLayers can read; preferably with no
user knowledge other than 'I want that one!'
Tiles are fine for developers, but for users, they don't care about tiles.
They just want a map. (This is just my experience/opinion, anyway.)
Tiles are great as the simplest thing possible. Potlatch, the OSM
editor which I write, just speaks 900913 tiles - basically because it
then doesn't have to worry about any projection other than spherical
Mercator, and that's a huge code saving.
We're finding that whenever someone comes up with a cool small aerial
imagery set, there's always a helpful OSMer around (actually, it's
usually Andy Allan) who will reproject and slice into 900913 tiles.
Similarly for out-of-copyright UK maps. About the only thing Potlatch
is missing by not having WMS support is USGS topos.
So yeah, I see the rationale behind "something that OpenLayers can
read", but "something that popular clients can read" is better
phrasing; and clients like Potlatch and Modest Maps are coalescing
around tiles as the lowest common denominator.
(All this is detail, anyway. +1 for reviving OAM.)
cheers
Richard
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