[udig-devel] loading browser-based map sites in udig as base/background layer?

[Jody Garnett]

Eric Jarvies wrote:
> hello,
>
> what would it take to be able to load sites like yahoo maps, et, al, 
> into udig and being able to use them as backgrounds?
A license agreement. I think you can get a yahoo id of some sort and 
armed with that we could grab images. I know that the open street map 
project managed to make arrangements along those lines. For other things 
like google maps there is only a javascript api; while you can reverse 
engineer things and use google maps as a background they have a history 
of noticing and sending nice letters when projects are found out.

The other alternative is nasa world wind servers; I made an example 
community module as a proof of concept that is kind of fun. It has 
better uptime that the jpl server used in the walkthrough and my 
implementation tiles the background.
> I am having to put together points/locations(POIs) that cover a fair 
> amount of geo-space, and i am always having to open my 
> browser(openmaps/yahoo maps/google maps/etc) to take a look at the sat 
> images for visual reference.  it would be wonderful if i could simply 
> load the browser-based map sites into udig, easily set the x, y, and 
> zoom level, have my vector shapefiles auto-adapt the same projection 
> view/etc. as the base/background browser-based map, and essentially be 
> able to move around my vector shapefiles, whilst also having the 
> browser-based maps in the background move along/generate new 
> views/tiles as-well.
So what is the problem here? Access to the data used by the browser 
based mapping solutions? Or access to a background the is slippy. You 
can open an embedded browser up inside udig; but there is no integration 
unless you want to write it?
> the other option is loading 256x256 image tiles, but this would then 
> require a fair amount of conversion work i assume.
It is not much work; the nasa world wind tile example shows how. But the 
problem is the data costs a lot of money.
> If anyone has some good advice, i would appreciate it. thank you,
> eric
Cheers,
Jody