[Marble-devel] Preview Feature for Map Creation Wizard

[Bernhard Beschow]

On Dienstag, 11. Oktober 2011 16:30:50 Utku Aydın wrote:
> Hello everyone,

Hi Utku,

> I am planning to add preview feature to our Map Creation Wizard. The feature
> will show the map-theme-to-be in a MarbleWidget.
> 
> First, I would like to know your opinion about if that's something needed.
> Creating a map is not a very complex thing at the moment, users can delete
> the theme and create it again if they are dissatisfied with the result.

Having a preview in the Map Creation Wizard is a great idea! In particular, I like that users can try out maps without having to delete them manually afterwards if they are not satisfied with the result.

> My second question is related to its implementation. To preview the theme,
> the wizard needs to create the whole theme and store that in a temporary
> directory. In my humble opinion, that's not exactly what "on the fly" means.
> There won't be any differences in the background with completing the wizard.
> So my question is, is there any better way to do that?

The current design of the MarbleWidget requires a temporary directory for e.g. caching the tiles anyway. Therefore, using a temporary directory shouldn't be seen as a contradiction to "on the fly".

The only challenge I can think of right now is how to make MarbleWidget load a GeoSceneDocument. It is currently only possible to pass a map theme ID, but not a "hand-crafted" GeoSceneDocument. You might need to add API to make that happen, unless you find another way to do it.

I'm looking forward to your patches! :)

Greetings,
Bernhard