Posted by Brandonian on April 26, 2012 at 2:12pm
While thinking about upcoming dev work on Geofield and related modules (as well as fishing for fodder for talks to give at DrupalCamps :-) ), I wanted to get some feedback from various members of the community on the following statement.
If I could change one thing about mapping in Drupal, it would be...
I'll start things off. I want it to be easier for non-GIS experts to make interesting map displays with Drupal data. Building maps in Drupal can be pretty cumbersome, and I'd like to see us/myself build better tools that make it easier to collect and display useful geospatial information.
Comments
Snap to Roads
I have a website, www.localmotohub.com, that uses mapping to show points and routes. The website is currently in the process of upgrading from 6 to 7.
I'd like to see improvements related to allowing users to enter mapping information related to roads and routes - key for me is the ability to "snap to a road" so someone can enter route information. Second is to provide an interface to upload and download to gps devices.
thanks for getting this
thanks for getting this started Brandonian!
well as announced on irc + twitter but not yet posted officially to the groups, i have some things upfront that i'd like to tackle in mapping:
Initial thoughts on doing server-side geo clustering for drupal 7
http://drupal.org/node/1547610
having it
is definitely what i'd support. "documenting a views geojson use case" is something where i can see huge potential both on the implementation side of drupal mapping & for streamlining the sitebuilding experience. see http://drupal.org/node/1471026
we have some very great contributors to the mapping ecosystem and technology keeps us excited: geofield, views_geojson, geocoder and many more. of course, i would be very happy to see more people promoting and contribing to mapping in drupal.
let's do presentations and sprints, like for example
Barcelona Dev Days Sprint: Improve Mapping in Drupal 7
http://barcelona2012.drupaldays.org/improve-mapping-drupal-7
Documentation is definitely
Documentation is definitely very important to getting more people involved. This is an area where I think we're really hurting.
Simple Input Widget
I think Drupal does a great job of outputting maps, but I would like to see better widgets for inputting locations and addresses.
This is kind of a
This is kind of a summarization of previous commentors along with my thoughts:
1. A good input widget to easily enter points, lines and even routes (snapping to roads). Also ability to get user location from browser, and ability to geocode an input address.
2. A method to reverse geocode a point to address.
3. Linking a list of locations (a view) with a map, so that selecting an item on a list, highlights the point on a map and vice-versa.
Just to add to my previous
Just to add to my previous comment:
Less duplication of geo modules
I would like to see less duplication of effort, so choosing the modules to use becomes simpler. I.e. having one or a few basic storage and api modules that everyone else builds on with input and output widgets, etc.
It seemed geo was a good candidate, but it didn't really take off (probably because other modules offered easier setup and more features?). Now in D7 geofield is becoming a popular choice, but there are still dozens of other modules doing their own thing.
Are there any current efforts towards this goal?