[udig-devel] General uDig SDK comments

["Rueben Schulz" <rschulz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

A while ago I started researching using uDig for a project I am working on.
For a description of the project please see:

http://lists.refractions.net/pipermail/udig-devel/2009-August/015686.html

I started prototyping in January (uDig 1.2 M7 SDK), before running out of
time and restarting again a few weeks ago (uDig 1.2 RC SDK).

First, thank your for all the work on the new release. Many issues I had
back in January are now gone (the Custom App tutorial works).

I have found Eclipse/uDig/GeoAPI/Geotools/JTS to be quite a steep learning
curve. I was previously familiar with GeoAPI/GT/JTS but some things have
changed since I last worked with them. I see that there has been a lot of
good examples written on the wikis (the Geotools Filter Example was very
helpful), but it seems that some work still needs to be done.

Unfortunately I do not have any concrete proposals for improving the
documentation, but I will describe one frustration that I had. After a bit
of digging, I got an IGeoResource into a FeatureSource (yay, back in
Geotools land). I then spent quite a bit of time trying to get features out
of the FeatureSource until finally realizing that GeoAPI feature had
replaced the old Geotools feature. A newbi mistake, but even though I know
about the GeoAPI/Geotools split it took quite a bit of time to figure it
out.

I will try to write notes about documentation problems I encounter and
devote some time at the end of my project to fixing them. However, my free
time is very limited and I can probably not justify doing documentation work
at work.

Hopefully, I will be make a little write-up about my project for the uDig
news / examples when I am finished, but that will require approval from my
client.

I have a few uDig specific questions/comments and will include them in a
separate email.

Thank you,
Rueben Schulz