search

Maps4HTML / MapML-Proposal

This repo contains explainer documents for the scope of the MapML proposal.
Other
13 stars 3 forks source link

Clarify usage between "Map Markup elements" and "Web Mapping elements" #50

Closed Malvoz closed 3 years ago

Malvoz commented 3 years ago

Some(one) expressed concerns around humans writing (complex) MapML (I can't find the particular statement that I vaguely recall, can search harder if that's necessary), this is mostly a misunderstanding, similar to SVG or MathML, while the markup can be written manually for certain use cases, it's mostly going to be generated by data providers and tools.

We should clarify this. MapServer does a good job of that:

Don’t worry about the complexity of the <mapml> document. It is automatically generated by MapServer and consumed by the viewer. It is not intended to be generated by humans.

As does MathML:

https://w3c.github.io/mathml/#abstract:

While MathML is human-readable, authors typically will use equation editors, conversion programs, and other specialized software tools to generate MathML. Several versions of such MathML tools exist, both freely available software and commercial products, and more are under development.

https://w3c.github.io/mathml/#interf_genproc:

although MathML can be written by hand and read by humans, whether machine-aided or just with much concentration, the future of MathML is largely tied to the ability to process it with software tools.

We should probably add a paragraph or two with a similar statement about MapML under the Map Markup elements heading.

And I think we should rename that heading to MapML Document elements because the Web Mapping elements: <map>, <layer>, <area> (which are intended to be written widely by humans) are "Map Markup elements" too.

We should certainly include the clarification in the MapML spec as well.

Malvoz commented 3 years ago

The is already an explanation for this in https://github.com/Maps4HTML/MapML-Proposal/blob/master/high-level-api.md#the-extent-element:

Web maps’ content is, typically, but not exclusively, provided by content servers associated with server-side Geographic Information Systems and their APIs.

I think that should suffice.