Use Case: The GeoWeb

[prushforth]

This is an issue that examining existing map widget behaviour probably won't reveal, but it's worth discussing as a requirement. I think it could be important for us to figure out how to better leverage the key thing that sets Web apart from other information systems: the "hyperlink".

It's clear that the huge databases represented by the map libraries all contain links, but the objective of this issue is to try to tease out the feature of hyperlinks that make the Web successful, and which could be applied to geospatial (and other 2d / 3d "mappable") data to enable some use cases, which I'll try to enumerate here, but which isn't guaranteed to be a complete list:

• links from locations to other locations: can we make a type of link within map content that allows the map to link to another map, potentially on another domain, just like the <a href> currently allows for Web pages. Such links should be user-activatable, just as their html incarnation is. If the link is to another map, the map browsing context (the layer) might navigate. If the link is to an html document, the top-level browsing context might navigate. If the link is annotated with an appropriate target attribute value, the content could pop up or slide out, if we come up with a standard UI for that.
• links between alternate representations of the current service, such that the user agent can either automatically choose, or present an affordance to allow the user to choose.
• links between services that allow federation of map content providers. Certainly the giant global databases probably don't want to create such links, but national spatial data infrastructures, and even intra-national SDIs could use such a feature to federate. For example, in Canada the national Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure could link to the provincial SDIs, and vice versa. Such links could be user activated (panning or zooming or clicking) or automatically triggered by zooming or panning.

Finally the title of this issue pays homage to Ron Lake, whose "GML Developer Days" conference gave way to the visionary and evocatively named GeoWeb Conference, at which I spent happy hours dreaming with the other dreamers in attendance.

[Malvoz]

Corresponding capability: #19.