[udig-devel] automated: map layer selection, styling, zoom to desired bbox, export pdf/svg/other?

[Vince Darley]

We've been building our longstanding route optimisation framework 
around uDig recently, with a fair degree of success.  One important 
capability we now need to create is map-based reporting.  While we're 
also interested in the possibility to pull program-defined maps into 
BIRT, we're currently aiming slightly lower:

Assume we have a map, with a bunch of layers, one or two of which 
represent a route optimisation solution (e.g. layer1: a set of points 
with route ids and sequence ids assigned to them; layer2: a set of 
lines showing the actual driving route on the map, again with route 
id and sequence id assigned to them).  There are lots of other 
background layers too (road network, rivers, etc).

What we'd like to do, programmatically, is:

For each available 'route id':

1) Define a style for our layers which only colours/shows the 
points/lines with this route id.

2) Zoom to the bbox of those points/lines (with a bounding envelope 
of 500m, say)

3) Export the resulting area (ideally to a vector format such as 
pdf/svg, else to png)

4) Add some annotation/legend to the export

Of course there's no need for the 'Map' to really do all that 
zooming/styling/rendering onscreen -- it could happily just render to 
a suitable "export device".

Can anyone point us to what is and is not available to help with the 
above, and any suggestions for how to go about steps 3,4 in particular?

thanks for any advice,

Vince.