Draw Crosshair in reference map when box is too small

[dmorissette]

Email to Steve Lime, 2002-02-27:

Hi Steve,

You've probably noticed before that when you zoom in a lot, the
reference map box becomes a single pixel which is barely visible.

We would like to make the following change to address that:
  - As long as the ref. map box is bigger than 3x3 pixels, behavior
    remains unchanged
  - When the box would be smaller than 3x3 pixels then we draw a
    little cross instead of the box... see attached images for an 
    example... we would probably go with the bigger cross size since
    it is the most visible. 

I think this is a quite minor change, but I wanted to run it by you
before doing it just in case.

Daniel

[dmorissette]

Steve Lime wrote:
> 
> This comes up often. I would suggest the following changes...
> 
>   - add MARKER, MARKERSIZE, MINBOXSIZE and MAXBOXSIZE parameters to the
> REFERENCE object, MARKER is just like a CLASS SYMBOL and the others are
> given in pixels
> 
>   - if box is smaller than MINBOXSIZE (use box width or height) then
> use the symbol defined by MARKER and MARKERSIZE (that way the user can
> use whatever symbol, cross hair, star or whatever), could set a
> crosshair as a default
> 
>   - if box is greater than MAXBOXSIZE (use box width or height) then
> draw nothing, often the whole map gets covered when zoomed way out and
> it's perfectly obvious where you are (really don't need the reference
> map)
> 
> How's that sound? I had most of this in place in 3.2 but pulled it
> during a rewrite...
> 
> Steve
> 

[dmorissette]

Hi Steve,

Looks like a great plan.  A little more than what we were thinking of
doing, but I think it's worth the extra work given the level of
flexibility that this provides.

I'll file this as a bug just to keep track of it when it happens.

Daniel

----

Reassigned to Julien.

[jlacroix]

It's implemented.
The last thing to do is to update the documentation.

[dmorissette]

The new feature has been implemented exactly as proposed by Steve Lime above.

The docs for this should probably go in the mapfile-reference.html which is 
maintained by JF Doyon.  Should we update it ourselves, or do you want to do the 
update yourself, JF?  

[jdoyon@…]

Well I've updated my copy of the docs, but before I commit, should this really 
apply to the 3.5 version of the docs ? Or should I fork and create one for 
3.6dev ?

[dmorissette]

This definitely belongs in a new 3.6dev version of the document.  I had the same 
concerns when I wrote my comment above, so I gather from what you wrote that if 
you commit your changes to CVS then this will affect the live website... and 
this is bad.

Normally when we branch in CVS, we create a branch for maintenance updates of 
the release version (i.e. 3.5 in this case), and the main trunk contains the 
current development version (3.6dev in this case).  So I guess what would be 
needed would be that the current version of the docs be tagged/branched as 
rel-3.5.0, and that this version be used for the live website.  Then we can 
update the main trunk with any changes that will eventually make up the 3.6 
version.

Steve is in the CC: list of this bug... maybe he can talk to Jamie and arrange 
that?  I'm really not sure how things are working with the docs on the UMN 
website and who is responsible for them.

[dmorissette]

The only thing left in this bug was updating the mapfile-reference.html.  

I see on the UMN website that all the information is there in version 3.6 of the 
docs, MARKER, MARKERSIZE, etc. are all documented.  However the information is 
gone in version 3.7 of the docs it is gone.

Do you have any idea why JF?

[dmorissette]

OK, I'll mark this fixed. I created bug 350 for JF for the documentation issue.