Roger,
This project is very interesting to me. I don't think I will be able to attend - I would need much more lead time to get away from work for so long:( But I would like to provide a vision of what I want to be able to do one day and let you decide if there is any synergy possible as the projects move forward.
Preamble
1. The USGS has made a huge amount of cartographic source data available on the web for free.
2. The data is stored compressed in a well defined standard format. http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/
3. The data can be used to create planemetric and topographic maps.
4. Planemetric data is presented as a topologicaly structured graph and the topographic data is presented as an array of elevations. These data can be convolved to produce a very high quality 3D topographic map.
Vision
Point a browser to a known dataset and materialize a 2 or 3D map of an area as described by the data.
Point a browser to a pair of known 2 and 3D datasets covering the same geographic area and materialize an Alice World of that area (or a subset of it) and enable the user to explore it.
Discussion
There is no place on the web that I have found that provides this kind of service. There are places where you can get digitized map images but they are high bandwidth raster graphics and offer no user interaction other than zooming and panning.
The SDTS data standard is a recent evolution in geospatial data distribution and forms the basis of future work on the ITS (Intelligent Transportation System).
Squeak has the required infrastructure in Baloon Graphics and Alice.
Best Regards,
John-Reed Maffeo Mesa, AZ
Roger Whitney wrote:
Ralph Johnson and I are planning to offer a course on extreme programming (XP) May 15 - June 9 at UIUC in Champaign-Urbana Illinois. Students will learn XP by working as an XP team to build a multiuser multimedia system in Squeak.
There is a course description at http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/cs497rej/XP+workshop. See http://www.xProgramming.com/ for more information about extreme programming.
While the course is designed for UIUC students, others are welcome to attend the course. Those with experience in Squeak or XP would not have to attend the entire time to benefit from the course and contribute to the project. If you are interested in attending all or part of the course contact me at whitney@cs.sdsu.edu for more details.
If you do not attend the course you can help us out by acting like a customer. Take a look at the project description at http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/cs497rej/ObjectWeb and suggest features/extensions to the project. So here is your chance to suggest to a team of UIUC students to implement some Squeak feature you always wanted. Of course, as is the XP way, the on-site customer will rank all features (stories) in order of importance.
Roger Whitney Mathematical & Computer Sciences Department whitney@cs.sdsu.edu San Diego State University http://www.eli.sdsu.edu/ San Diego, CA 92182-7720 (217) 328-0824 (619) 594-3535 (619) 594-6746 (fax)