Re: [udig-devel] udig life cd

[Andrea Antonello <andrea.antonello@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jody, Jesse, thanks for the answers.
I'll try to resume all the mails in one big piece to have better
readability.
Sorry for this long post.

Answers to 1) and 2)

> You can pass a map as a command line argument and it will start with
> that map open.  You can also define things like the workspace to use,
> the vmargs (which is are how you can specify arguments that are passed
> to the VM).  I'll make up a page somewhere for this stuff.
> Create a shell or bat file with the line:
>
> udig -data c:\workspace testmap.umap
>
> then the workspace will be at c:\workspace and a new project will be
> created in the workspace that contains the map you requested to be
> loaded.  Just tested this with RC9 and it works.

great!!

>> 3) the data instead should be no problem, even if readonly, just you
>> will not be able to change the style, right?
>>   
> Well you can change the presentation; just not save the change. I do
> think jesse tries to write out
> the project file all the time (perhaps this decision would need to be
> changed).  The seek time on a CD
> is horrible - so the rendering experience would be very bad.

Yup, agreed, but sometimes it is just good to have people to browse the
territory and let them download only the visible part to disk in the
sense of shapefiles and whatever is on. Lots of professionals here seem
to have pcs with very low diskspace and from the 4 giga of cartography
they need only a small part. That could be a reason to make this ok even
if the performance is not good and you can't edit or save style.

>> 4) imagine to have to automagically load a whole pile of geotiffs and
>> geojpgs. Obviously you can't preload them, instead you could have
>> somewhere a list with the bounds and you could load only the visible
>> ones in the window and also make the visualization scaledependent. Where
>> could I best nest the regarding code for this?
>>   

Jody answer:

> The raster support should cover all this - but the raster support is not
> available for uDig 1.1 (we need to update our version of GeoTools).

I'm using the sdk as playing UDig, instead of the release. With the rc9
I am able to load geotiffs and geojpgs on my linux box. I wanted to try
it on windows so I downloaded the same version, but not sdk. On windows
udig doesn't load the same data I used before on linux. Is there a
difference between the udig and sdk release?

Jesse answer:

> This is a weakness right now.  Take a look at the IServices and
> IGeoResources for these.  To cheat for now you can add information to
> the parameter object that is passed in to the service because it is
> persisted.  And when the service is loaded you can retrieve the
> information from the parameters.

I will for sure have a look on that, thanks. Also the scale dependent
visibility (as for shapes) could be a generic parameter for all data.

>> 5) is it the product that one creates to keep the packaging infos, i.e.
>> if I create a viewer with just sdk classes and no others, than will
>> anyone be able to recreate that viewer just by having the product plugin?
>>   

Jody answer:

> Not sure I understand that ... they can create the viewer just using the
> plugins (the product is only helping
> you manage what plugins are used - you could do it all by hand).

Jesse answer:

> The product file just refers to Features that are used to construct
> the product.  Each Feature lists the plugins that the Feature
> includes.  You
> can create your own features so that you can distribute the plugins in
> different ways.  For example you could have a "Lite" version that only
> has the plugins to view shapefiles but no editing or selecting or
> anything like that.  Then you can create another that is the "extras"
> feature that can be downloaded and added for other functionality.

Yes, that was what I meant. In fact some of the "configuration" is done
throught the inclusion of the plugins. But what about the perspective
start configuration? I.e. where is it written that udig should start
with a project view a layer view and were to put them in the layout?

>> 6) The udig project file doesn't support relative paths? This would
>> be mandatory to have a project starting from cd.

Jody answer:

> I would save individual "context documents" which support relative
> paths; that would let users quickly
> set up new projects (saved in their home directory) ...

I don't understand what you mean exactly here.

Jesse answer:

> Ugh no it doesn't.  The ServiceParameterPersister is responsible for
> persisting the parameters.  I dont know that I have time to do the
> work right now.  But if you make a patch I will happily apply and test
> it for you.  There is also a ServiceParameterPersisterTest class that
> you can add the relative path test to.

Ok, that is good, I will try to see if I can find what you mean. In case
I'll post some questions... as usual :)

>> 7) I burned udig on a cd to see what happens when launched from there
>> (and on a windows box) and the answer is... nothing. Well almost
>> nothing. The splashscreen starts, a folder
>> .eclipse/net.refractions.udig_product...etc.etc. is created with the
>> configuration in it and then... everything dies. No error, nothing at
>> all. I tried to launch it from commandline and the same happened.
>> (this makes me also think of the possibility to have a debug mode,
>> which has some logging system (log4j?))

Jody answer:

> There is a debug mode ... called tracing.
>
> To enable it (even on a deployed application) you can create a
> ".options" file in the plugin you are having problems with.
> For more details please see the developers guide ...
>
> There is a command line option -consoleLog that will put log messages
> to the screen (rather then just to disk).

Great, I've seen something in the docs, I'll check. Thanks.

Jesse answer:

> Right you have to specify where the configuration area should be.  add
> the parameter -configuration %HOMEPATH%\uDigConfig
> 
> So something like:
> 
> udig -data %HOMEPATH%\uDigWorkspace\
> -configuration %HOMEPATH%\uDigWorkspace\ config testMap.umap

That sounds good. I will do some test and report back later. Have to run
now.

Thank you very much for the time to answer to all this.
Ciao
Andrea