[Community] PrimaGIS 0.6 : is better ergonomy for ZCO Datastore possible ?

[Kai Hänninen]

Hi Gérard

Gérard Vidal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have installed PrimaGIS and I try to set up an educational site. I am
> facing a problem that may lead to a deadlock so I would like to get
> users ans developpers opinion. Am I doing things in the wrong way or is
> there something to change for future PrimaGIS releases ?

I don't think you're doing anything wrong and the future of PrimaGIS is 
always open to change :)


> Our academic programs require to tackle global problems like climate or
> ocean circulation, medium scale questions like pollution and natural
> hazards,   local investigations like  structural geology. When I
> register data sets I have not found any  other solution than mixing up
> all my WMS ressources(ZCO Data Stores) in the same portal_gis MapTool.
> Viewed from the ZMI it still looks great (at least at the beginning!) 5
> or 10 elements in a list. This is quite reasonable but viewed from the
> PrmaGIS layer .... OOPS ......you get tens and tens of possible layers
> in a scrollable list ; even if it is probably the best possible
> solution, it is not simple to deal with. I got scared thinking what
> might happen when the site ages and gets hundred of ZCO Datastore
> bearing thousands of possible PrimaGIS layers....in the same scrollable
> list...

You're correct that the current "Data source" selection interface is far 
from optimal. It simply lists all the feature types from all data stores 
  configured within the gis_tool and this can get really big when the 
number of data stores grows.

The biggest problem is the editing form and I'd be willing to put some 
effort into including an improvement for that before the 0.6 release. 
Would this be something you'd like to help us with? It wouldn't have to 
be necessarily coding. Good ideas, mock-ups, etc would also be helpful.

I could put together a custom widget for the data source selection that 
would handle the large number of data stores / feature types in a better 
and more consistent way (possibly using some AJAX callbacks that would 
pull in stuff on-demand or something). I'm open to suggestions on how 
such a widget should look and operate.


> 
> Is there any solution to get simpler behavior (except by instancing as
> many plones as topics). Would it be possible for example to have "ZCO
> folders" inside the portal_gisMap_Tool  that may correspond each to one
> scrollable list in the modify PrimaGIS layer page. The user may then see
> as many scrollable lists as topics;  he can choose a list then scroll
> only the layers  which interests him.

I wouldn't touch the gis_tool and the Zope side of things as the whole 
data store management story will change dramatically when we move over 
to the Zope3 code base in the post-0.6 versions.


cheers,
Kai

-- 
Kai Hänninen                  +358-50-558-7935
Software engineer             www.mbconcert.fi
MB Concert Ky                 kai.hanninen at mbconcert.fi