forum.opennauticalchart.org

You can look at Gabi's solution at http://openseamap.he1ix.org/map.html
and Dirks solution at http://maps.grade.de/ol3.html

Hi Gabi,
I think you got me somehow wrong. This is a Opensource project and should act under the terms of a free public license. The only issue I have is (only referring to the online map at the moment), that Some people (not only me) started this project 2 years ago and have already done some work on it.
What I have meant with the comment you are referring to is, that I felt some kind overrun in a MB way too. It took no week after registering to the project until Dirk opens a thread saying we need a new online map. After asking him why, it came out, that he have not looked at the existing map in detail at all.
I am open to every new idea and task, but just coming in and say here are my solutions: eat or die, is also no open way. My solution was not mentioned at all in the original request. I spent a lot of time into the existing solution over 2 years now and are not willing to throw it away in one week. OL3 support is not the Holy Grail
So please let's wait and discuss the possible solutions. At the moment the decision mailing list or forum is still pending. Do not try to force something, that is not discussed in public. Not all contributors are subscribed to the forum.
If I port the existing map to OL3 it is no decision to use this map later on. It is just for me. I am using online map viewers in other projects also, hence "only for me" it is no waste of time. You are developing your map too.
In an ideal way we find a solution to merge the advantages of both maps into one final solution.

First of all: This is no new project. This is ongoing development for 2 years now and there is a reason why I do not add all layers i can get somewhere in the web on the fast track.
I am writing online maps for more than 7 years now. As already stated above adding layers is easy. Porting to OL3 is also easy. Sadly OL3 was not available when I started this project.

We need to decide what the online map should do. There are a lot of sites only displaying a map everywhere in the web. Do we only want to display another "look at my cool layer collection" solution? I think everyone can do this on his own. We do not need a new project for this. How much more or less usable layers do you want to have? The real goal (rendering our own layers, creating maps for chart plotters and so on) get more and more invisible.

Now to the general questions above:

Restricted zoom levels
The weather is only working from z4 to z7 on other zoom levels you will see nothing. If weather is selected, automatically zoom to a feasible level. Otherwise the user will see nothing and gets confused. Also prevent the possibility to zoom into other levels than the allowed ones. If weather is deselected, zoom back to the last used zoom level and position of the base map.

Weather page in general
On the first selection I will not see any weather layer (z6). Need to zoom in and out to get it loading (Firefox on Linux). Do not display all weather layers on the first load. This is confusing (no usable information)

Map in general
I do not like the layout. The sidebar is not usable to display large content The icons (with no text) are not intuitive. You need to click around to find the needed information.
With "as desktop" I mean, that there is no need to have an additional web site for help, information, news and so on. Everything can be displayed using additional dialogs on top of the map, if selected. I have all this features in place. That is why the code base seems to be large regarding to the displayed layers. I am missing in your map:
- No cookies for position, zoom and selected layers (later on selected language)
- No internationalization
- No overpass.api query to gather additional information
- No coordinate grid
- No help links and about information
- No map key
- No possibility to load additional html content into dialogs

As a quick test I ported the weather pages to OL3. It took me about 3 hours including a code clean up and reintroducing the zoom control. This never worked properly with OL2 and a limited number of zoom levels.
I think the port of the existing map should be doable in a feasible amount of time. I will look at the base map after Christmas.

I did a short test to search harbours in skipperguige by OSM name. This fails every time. I have tested 10 harbours in wide areas of the Baltic Sea. Seems to be no solution.
One of the biggest problems is, that skipperguide does not use the official name of the harbour only the place name e.g Yachthafen Burgtiefe will be named only Burgtiefe. If it is possible, that skipper guide uses the official names of the harbours, it should be possible to open the page via "search=Yachthafen+Burgtiefe" argument in the url. All checked harbours have the official name in the OSM db.
I found no other tag in the OSM db that is reliable enough for doing a search.

The already existing Map has been developed over a year now and contains a lot of features, which will not be visible at the first view. It is completely rewritten and contains no code from OpenSeaMap. Only the CSS file is not changed until now. That is why it looks similar.

We already have the following features in place:
- Internationalization (English and German are working. Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian are prepared. Language will be selected by the browser settings at the moment)
- clickable objects (I started this feature already. It is only working for harbours at the moment, but can be easily enhanced for all objects. It uses overpass.api.
- Trip planner (completely rewritten)
- Weather pages and harbour meteogramm
- Modular architecture
- Map download page (available maps are read via xml file)
- Some minor features like map key, nominatim search

OpenLayers affects below 30% of the complete code base. New layers can be easily added and the design is quickly changeable via CSS. I see no need to begin more or less once again from scratch. It would be easier to port the existing code to OL3 than beginning once again.