[udig-devel] Fw: Question about the Tree view in Catalog tab

[Jody Garnett]

Gattuso.Peter at epamail.epa.gov wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The tree structure in the Catalog tab seems to consist of only two
> levels.  Yet, in the screenshot for the Mozambique/Populations at Risk,
> there is a nice tree structure with folders and subfolders.   If I am
> importing thousands of shapefiles, and they are organized by category,
> then state, then county (in corresponding folders), it would be nice to
> show that directory structure, so the compressed catalog view is not so
> gigantic.   I cannot seem to import a folder, just a single shapefile.
> Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?
>   
The catalog view is intended to show active connections. You will find 
several requests for alternate
views in Jira. And you can see the Population at Risk project 
implemented one of them (they called
it Catalog due to a customer requirement).

One change we tried to do was allow for the nested structure of 
GeoResource shown by a WMS,
the last time we merged this change it failed - but the concept and API 
does suppor this use.

If you wish to defined an additional IResolve called Cateogry that would 
be fine, it would not "resolve"
to spatial content, but could be used to have memebers that were your 
other shapefiles.
That would be a quick hack.

You may also consider the keywords available to any GeoResourceInfo, 
constructing a view around them
where keyword is represented as a folder may be amusing.  For an example 
of constructing another view
based a generated breakdown of GeoResource please seee the search view.

This would be a slightly longer but more reusable hack.

And finally you could ask Amr if he can make the code used in 
populations at risk available as a community
plugin.  The code is *not* dynamic and is just a presentation of an XML 
file.  But you could generate
one of those XML files yourself (or perhaps just generate the data 
structure based on a keyword seach).
> In a similar vein, it would be great to have "active" categories in the
> Layers tab.  By active, I mean that you can perform functions normally
> done on a single layer, and they would apply to all layers below.  For
> example, if I have 25 county road layers and I want to change the style
> for all of them, I could put those layers under a Roads category, and
> make the change only once.
>   
We had wanted to select more then one layer, and then change the style. 
Something to consider.

Best of luck and thanks for the ideas.
Jody