Vision: Full on wikimap

Hi everyone. I thought I would give you a heads-up about a project that I am working on and some of the extensions to drupal that I will be planning. I would hope to integrate some of this work into the future of the gmaps module if possible. I am currently working on something called the "Greater Victoria Community Atlas". check out development at http://greenmap.lifecyclesproject.ca

Things are still in alpha stage, and are likely to be a bit wonky. (best viewed in firefox at the moment)

It is basically an integration of liquid_wiki, gmaps, location, and a few other modules.. The idea is to create a wikimap system whereby users to add and edit points on the map. Each point on the map is linked to a liquid_wiki page where users can add content and pictures wikistyle. The map is based on layers that users can turn on and off (right hand-side menu). Each layer is actually a catagory pulled from taxomony. Marker Icons on the map are pulled from images in the catagory_image module. When you click on a point, it brings up the relevant page in an inline frame. I would love some comments!

Oh yeah, marker data is pulled from the database dynamically depending on where the user is looking - so this could theoretically hold tens of thousands of data points / wiki nodes.

Future work:
2) Expand on location module so that we can attach more than just point data to a node. We could attach a point to a node, or we could attach a line to a node (for marking out trails), or we could attach an area to a node ( for marking out bounded areas!)

3) Extend the gmaps module to allow users to easily "paint" lines or areas. (Just as they can use gmaps to select a point)

4) Make it so that as a user browses within the "info window" (ie, the drupal site), as they click on a different node, the top map changes. (drupal would detect whether it is being viewed inside our map_viewer, and if we are, would pass it javascript telling it what node we are looking at)

5) Build a google earth version of the map viewer.

Thoughts anyone? If you would like source code let me know and I will post it

Cheers!

Patrick Hayes