[osflash] GIS data

[Claus Wahlers]

> I'm just getting into GIS, so don't know much about data (yet), but I
> would love to help you write a global map component.  I was going to
> build my component on top of ActionStep (Scott and Rich and really
> turned up ActionStep in the last few weeks) and have it integrate with
> mapserver (all open source solution).

i'm also very new to gis.
lot's of stuff to discover, and an interesting topic for sure.

> Were you intending your component to integrate with MapServer?  My
> Flex knowledge is poor but would it be possible to have a component
> with ActionStep and Flex interfaces?  I've written on of these map
> components before and they're pretty simple once you get the
> communication interface down.

well i guess the idea would be to keep it as independent from the
various frameworks as possible. basically a class library that you can
plugin wherever you like. i saw the mapserver project (there even is
already a flash frontend.. [1]), but didn't dig further yet.

[1] http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/user_utilities/fmv.zip

as for what exactly i'm planning: nothing very sophisticated. i'm just
playing around, as far as time permits. basically i just wanted to do
a simple component that displays a zoomable world map, without much
projection hassles and without need for specialized backends. quite
simple stuff.

although a full blown open source gis solution sounds like a
challenging project.
cheers,
claus.