John-Reed
	The idea of leveraging the USGS data is attractive. I will keep
this in mind. If we don't get to it in the course this summer, I will put
it on my lists of masters projects when I get back to San Diego in the fall.

>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.
>
>


Roger Whitney              Mathematical & Computer Sciences Department
whitney at 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)