The MapML Proposal — Goals and Details

At the Maps for the Web workshop, Peter Rushforth (@prushforth) gave an overview of the Map Markup Language, and then gave a more detailed discussion of the syntax, with some demos, in a breakout session.

In addition, Simon Pieters (@zcorpan) presented the review that he and colleagues at Bocoup did of the current specifications.

• Video of Peter’s presentation (at 19:00), followed by Simon’s (at 36:13)
• Video of the breakout session + written minutes
• Peter’s slides as powerpoint, with his pre-recorded audio, and position statement
• Simon’s slides on slides.com, and position statement
• The full report, on Google Docs, prepared by Simon & colleagues as part of the OGC Testbed initiative

There was lots of discussion in the gitter chat and in the breakout about specific aspects of the proposal.

PS, There’s an old Discourse thread on this subject, too, if you want some far-back background: Map Markup Language

Comments from the live chat during Peter & Simon’s presentations:

• SebastienDurand @SebastienDurand: I would say even that min and max zoom is also critical at the layer level

• Amelia Bellamy-Royds @AmeliaBR: Are you suggesting that the layer should automatically disappear if the map zooms in/out beyond the zoom range for the layer?

  (because yes, that’s a very good use case, and an intuitive way to describe it!)

• SebastienDurand @SebastienDurand: yes in some case this is critical to protect the data integrity and user experience

• вкαя∂εℓℓ @briankardell: I guess it is possible that not all layers can even show all tiles

• Bryan Haberberger @thehabes: A unified coordinate reference system…that is quite the battle

• SebastienDurand @SebastienDurand: For example legal boundaries have a precision to them and should not be seen passed a specific scale because their position on the basemap would become inaccurate

• Iván Sánchez Ortega @IvanSanchez: Re: tile zoom, See the Leaflet concep of max/minZoom vs max/minNativeZoom https://leafletjs.com/reference-1.7.1.html#gridlayer-minzoom

  One is the zoom levels that the thing is visible at, the other is the levels of the tile pyramid with available data

• SebastienDurand @SebastienDurand: I am aware of these capacities in leaflet. I was just stating a behavioral requirement for map on and associated data representation in HTML. I am a big fan on leaflet at this point in time.

• Karl Grossner @kgeographer: Are layer sources limited to tiles?

• вкαя∂εℓℓ @briankardell: thanks peter, nice presentation on the idea @prushforth ^

• Peter Rushforth @prushforth: Thanks @briankardell_twitter you too, great talk. Gives us a dose of reality. Break it down, and build community to help

  @kgeographer no I will describe more in my breakout tomorrow. but no.

• Fred Esch @fredesch: Has anyone made a MapML react component?

• Peter Rushforth @prushforth: Yes MicroXML was what we thought was the right idea at the time, but realize that HTML parser rules. We can , and will switch asap.

  We would like to make TCRS into the concrete proposal that CSS WG seeks.

• Peter Rushforth @prushforth: @fredesch no I don’t know React but would like to see how that would work.

• Doug Schepers @shepazu: Zoom and pan for CSS would be great for SVG, as well

• Peter Rushforth @prushforth: We can build a coalition of needs with the SVG community

• вкαя∂εℓℓ @briankardell: so many use cases for this, in so many diverse cases - lots of common and complex solutions over and over

• Fred Esch @fredesch: @prushforth I do react components, ping me later about this,

• вкαя∂εℓℓ @briankardell: @zcorpan nice assessment

• Bryan Haberberger @thehabes: Very cool to see a live time review!

• Peter Rushforth @prushforth: @zcorpan great presentation thanks for your help with this, looking forward to more work together.

• Simon Pieters @zcorpan: Thanks @prushforth !

• вкαя∂εℓℓ @briankardell: It would be great if the people from mapping libraries were involved in those discussion about a proposal for pan/zoom and how this could reduce their complexity

For the breakout, it’s probably easier to see the chat recap/minutes.