[udig-devel] Re: [Geoserver-users] R: SLD editor

[Andrea Aime <aaime@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fabio Da Soghe ha scritto:
> Indeed this seems very odd to me: I was sure there would have been
> plenty of open source utility to edit visually an SLD style, but
> there's none today.
>
> In my company we are in great difficult for this reason: programmers
> are the only capable of editing an SLD document with good proficiency
> but they are busy developing the application that will use it, and
> the GIS people has not all the XML and WMS knowledge needed to create
> more then the simplest style.
>
> Maybe SLD is not so much used today?

The only systems I know using SLD are those Geotools based, and DeeGree.
uDig uses SLD under covers, whilst unfortunately Geoserver does not have
an SLD editor. To be fair, uDig covers the most common cases, and makes
you revert to SLD hand coding for the most complex issues.

The WMS spec did not force people to use SLD, and given the complexity
of the specification, most just flew away.

I agree an SLD editor is very much needed, yet:
* basic cases are handled by uDig. The only pity is that it's hard to
  build a complex layered style with different "simple" styles for
  different scale levels, and hard to apply filters (the CQL module
  would allow for quick and intutive filter spec input).
* more complex ones tend to turn into scripts anyways. On the
  Sigma demo we do have an SLD that is around 2000 lines, any graphical
  editor allowing to play with such a best would not probably be much
  simpler than coding XML directly...

I guess the middle ground is the interesting territory that's not
covered, that is, scales and filters with relatively static symbolizers.
uDig could evolve to cover it.

Cheers
Andrea