[Mediawiki-l] Maps (and Semantic Maps) 0.6 released

[Jeroen De Dauw]

Maps <http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Maps> [0] and Semantic
Maps<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Semantic_Maps>[1] 0.6 are now
available for download [2].

This is a big update, including a lot of new features, bug fixes, security
patches, and most of all, internal improvements, making both extensions more
modular and extendible (these changes are not covered here, see the relevant
change logs for more info). It is also the first release of Semantic Maps
that requires you to run the SMW update script, as it requires a new table
layout to store coordinates (more info on
this<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Semantic_Maps#Upgrading_to_0.6>
).

The important new features are:

   - Maps now supports real coordinate parsing and formatting, which allows
   you to input coordinates in any of the supported notations at any point in
   the extension, and can also request any output to be in the notation of your
   choice. This means you can now choose what format Semantic
MediaWiki<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki>shows
coordinates in, such as in ask queries. The supported notations are
   DMS, decimal degrees, decimal minutes and floats. All those can be either
   directional or non directional. A new parser function has been added that
   allows you to convert between any of these formats:
#coordinates<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Coordinates>
   .


   - New geographical functions:
#geodistance<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Geodistance>and #
   finddestination <http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Finddestination>. You
   can use the #geodistance parser function to calculate the geographical
   distance between two points, from and to any of the supported formats. The
   #finddestination parser function can be used to find a destination given a
   starting point, an initial bearing and a distance.


   - Related to the new geographical functions is a rewritten distance query
   in Semantic Maps. It now takes into account performance and is scalable,
   which the old query was not, by using the new storage structure for
   coordinates. The notation for distance queries has also changed. Instead of
   using the like operator and a global distance parameter ( like
   #ask:[[Property: :~coordinates]]|distance=42 ) you now only have to specify
   your distance locally in the coordinate criteria itself like
   #ask:[[Property: :coordinates (42 km)]]. Like you can see you can now also
   specify a unit, which can be any of the supported
ones<http://mapping.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Help:Distance&action=edit&redlink=1>
   .


   - Support for various width and height notations. Previously Maps only
   accepted width and height values is px, forcing you to use maps of fixed
   sizes. Since most people want to have their complete page width visible even
   on small screens, this resulted in a lot of people using rather small maps,
   and so wasting screen space. 0.6 allows you to specify the size in px, ex,
   em, and most importantly, in %. The syntax is what you’d expect:
   width=”420px”, width=”420em”, width=”42%”. width=”420″ will default to using
   px, so is backward compatible. When using the % values, maps will even adapt
   their size when the screen width or the height of the container they are in
   is changed after the page has loaded.


   - Not a new feature, but rather one that’s removed:
OSM<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/OSM>support. The OSM service has
been completely removed from Maps and Semantic
   Maps as it was rather broken and not easy to upgrade to the internal
   structure of Maps 0.6. I’m planning to add it back later on, rewritten from
   ground up, in 0.6.1 or 0.6.2 or so. Note that you can still view OSM maps on
   your wiki using the
OpenLayers<http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/OpenLayers>service, which
has build in OSM layers, and also allows you to define your
   own layers since 0.5.5.

The most notable bugfixes are:

   - Fixed conflict with prototype library that caused compatibility
   problems with the Halo extension.
   - Added automatic icon image sizing for Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps
   markers.
   - Various security fixes, mostly preventing XSS attacks.

If no serious bugs are found in this release, a minor update can be expected
in a month or so.
[0] http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Maps
[1] http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Semantic_Maps
[2] http://mapping.referata.com/wiki/Help:Download

--
Jeroen De Dauw
* http://blog.bn2vs.com
* http://wiki.bn2vs.com
Don't panic. Don't be evil. 50 72 6F 67 72 61 6D 6D 69 6E 67 20 34 20 6C 69
66 65!
--