Thanks Jarek to remember the old KML-overlay solution (A project of User:Dschwen and me from 2007). The KML-solution had very limited features to make complex transformation to map an historical map on the actual world, but we can use the principle to provide via a template a link to a tool that use data from an Wiki subpage.
With the KML-solution we could only store lat, lon, 2 values for scaling the map and rotation angle. Now I would store a list of matching points with x,y in pixel of the map and lat,lon. Would this be ok for Maps-wraper? (I'm not an expert in this area.)
Like Maarten Dammers I want to make a first rapid hack as a base for the final solution.
If we know the parameter definition I could hack a template let's say "overlay2" that opens the right page in Maps-wraper's map viewer[1]. For this it would be nice if Maps-wraper could work with Commons imagenames as identifier instead of numbers. Would these be possible?
The Maps-wraper should have on the other side an export page for the matching parameters so that a user can store it on commons at a subpage.
The advantage of the KML-solution was that we don't need any caching storage. Now the transformations cost a lot of cpu-time so we need a caching of the tiles at maps-wraper.
Greetings Tim Alder
P.S: I think we should organize the communication so that every mail is going directly to everone or we should use only the maps-l mailing list[2]. So it is confusing. I would prefer the mailing list but don't want to loose anyone how is interested. Sussana should decide.
[1] http://maps-warper.instance-proxy.wmflabs.org/maps/1 [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/maps-l
2013/5/30 Tuszynski, Jaroslaw W. <JAROSLAW.W.TUSZYNSKI@saic.com mailto:JAROSLAW.W.TUSZYNSKI@saic.com>
Hi all,____ __ __ A standard, way of geolocating maps involves use of subpages with KML code. See for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dayton,_Indiana_1878.png and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dayton,_Indiana_1878.png/overlay.kml . There was not a whole lot of people creating those KML’s and the software often does not like the subpages of files, but the infrastructure is there ready to use. If there was more interest in using them we could discuss some improvements to the system. We could also streamline kml production based on available data. Most current files are created using North/South/East/West edges and possible rotation. It might be more convenient to use coordinates of 4 corners, which is a format also supported by KML. ____ __ __ Another possibility would be to use Template:GeoPolygon, or both. ____ __ __ Are there any other fields specific to maps that are not template:Artwork? We could always upload a few sample images by hand (or pick existing ones) and ask community for help on formatting metadata, which would be than used as a template (using non Wikipedia meaning of the word) for the other uploads. That way we can easily see what are the possible improvements to Commons templates (using Wikipedia meaning of the word).____ __ __ We could also create a specialized template for maps, which could be just extension of Artwork template. But it would be the best to avoid that if not necessary. Rarely used templates tend to get little attention and maintenance. ____ __ __ Jarek T.____ User:jarekt____