emails from M Jones:
Oh, yeah, one more thing. People need to be able to enter a point, rather than
a box. In EML, we said to make the two points the same and they'll be
interpreted as a point. But a radio button to select "Point" or "Box" and that
does the right thing in each case would help (ie, if point is selected, let
person just click on map without dragging, and grey out one of the lat/lon pairs).
Matt
Matt Jones wrote:
Dan, this looks great. You did it very quickly! I particularly like the
place names idea...we can get a list of field stations and other common things
and use that very effectively for people. Probably a combo of the NRS/OBFS/LTER
site locations. Eventually (not now) a nice feature would be to optionally
allow someone to look up a place name on the internet using a gazeteer like the
Alexandria one, or others, to get a list of place names and their bounding boxes.
Some issues with the interface....
1) The map needs at least one more zoom level, maybe 2. What will this do to
image size? Most studies are going to occurs at less than 1x1 degree, so the
map doesn't work too well if all you can do is select a 1x2 degree box (the
east/west box seems to have a min of 2 degrees). I notice it allows you to
enter fractional numbers, but that doesn't help if you don't knwo them already.
2) The reason to have the map seems to be a) aid in finding the right area,
and b) visually validate the box is in about the right place. For (a), I think
the map needs to show more features at the lower zoom levels. In particular, if
you zoom to less than 1 degree (which is needed), the topo relief doen't allow
the user to orient. We need some roads or other features. Can you switch to a
different image at lower zoom levels?
3) Geo Coverage is repeatable, so the user needs to be able to insert and edit
multiple bounding boxes. Will the screen you showed be part of a 2 screen
wizard (one which lists the boxes, one which allows you to edit a single box?)
If so, the first screen could/should show all of the bounding boxes on the map
but not be editable. Unless you can draw multiple boxes on one map, and have
the coords change when you select a new box (which doesn't seem to work, but
maybe there are other options available that you're not using in this demo).
4) See the NCEAS data registry (http://data.nceas.ucsb.edu) for some
descriptive text on the Geo Description and the bounding box.
Nice job.
Matt
Dan Higgins wrote:
Hi All,
I have spent some time on a wizard screen for inputting geographic
coverage information; the current result is prototyped below. (Run the main
method in plugins.datapackagewizard.pages.Geographic class to see the
interactive version)
The same map control as in the query screen is used (with a higher resolution
map). I am thinking that the 'Named Regions' at the bottom should include a
default list (those in the nrs/obfs site lists?). The 'Select' button sets
(shows) the bounding box for the selected region on the map. This region list
should probably be global (shared across datapackages) and I am thinking that
maybe we need a button to 'create/add' a new named region for the map/lat-long
values?
Any comments/thoughts?
Dan
--
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Dan Higgins higgins@nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ Ph: 805-892-2531
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) 735 State
Street - Room 205
Santa Barbara, CA 93195
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Matt Jones jones@nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ Fax: 425-920-2439 Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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