[Marble-devel] Fwd: Re: AW: Run Marble, Run

[Torsten Rahn]

Some feedback regarding the MarbleRunners, that we had discussed privately:

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Fwd: Re: AW: [Marble-devel] Run Marble, Run
Date: Friday 21 November 2008
From: Torsten Rahn <rahn at kde.org>
To: Henry de Valence <hdevalence at gmail.com>


----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: AW: [Marble-devel] Run Marble, Run
Date: Friday 21 November 2008
From: Torsten Rahn <rahn at kde.org>
To: "Mülner, Helmut" <helmut.muelner at joanneum.at>

On Friday 21 November 2008 11:31:47 you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > This might be interesting for people on this list --
> > especially if you use the
> > MarbleWidget in your own application:
>
> interesting info about a nice idea!
> To make it even more useful for using MarbleWidget in other
> applications the widget and the runners should be separated,
> i.e. MarbleRunnerManager should not contain an assortment of
> hardcoded runners but a container of MarbleAbstractRunner objects
> (or pointers or smart pointers), and the runners should be added
> in the main program (outside MarbleWidget).

What do you think about making them plugins (that was actually what I had 
imagined to be the next step). That would then also allow for an application 
that uses "proprietary data" to use a closed source plugin to query the 
"closed" database.

Regards,

Torsten

> Best regards,
> Helmut


----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: AW: AW: [Marble-devel] Run Marble, Run
Date: Friday 21 November 2008
From: Torsten Rahn <rahn at kde.org>
To: "Mülner, Helmut" <helmut.muelner at joanneum.at>

Hi,

On Friday 21 November 2008 12:14:26 Mülner, Helmut wrote:
> > "closed" database.
> That would nicely separate the widget and the runners.
>
> Some ideas for runners:
>
>  - using geonames (either through the online service or from a local
> database) 

The osmname-finder Runner uses the OpenStreetMap database which queries 
GeoNames itself. So we indirectly do that already by using the OSM Runner.

> - selecting features, e.g. mountains, or: locations from Austria
>  - searching flickr photos

Sounds nice.  Where's the patch? ;-)

> I am not sure how large result set can be handled, perhaps at some stage
> QVector<GeoDataPlacemark*> should be replaced by something derived from
> QAbstractItemModel which could play nicer with the locationListView
> (MarbleSearchListView : QListView : QAbstractItemView)

Well, we plug the result into the Model already. But you are right that this 
could still need some improvement (as we are currently figuring out how to deal 
with the Model in general).

> Another idea: Perhaps the default placenames also shoud be handled by a
> runner, making it easier to replace the default placenames with a custom
> set.

Yes. I agree with that. The default placenames should be implemented as 
runners as well.

I think that we need to change the UI anyways in the way that by default it 
should show the whole list that the Default-Location-Runner returns. 
We would then drop the "on the fly"-results (which are a bit annoying if your 
hardware is slow). And we would only show a mixed result list of all runners.
(We need better sorting for that ...

May I forward our last few mails to the marble-devel list? That would keep our 
thoughts archived ...

Cheers,

Torsten

> Best,
> Helmut


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