[Dev] Feature suggestion: campus map

[Kaitlin Duck Sherwood]

Philip Gaudette wrote:

>I'm new to Chandler (but not to software), so I welcome feedback.  Is this a
>reasonable sort of comment?  Too much detail?  Not enough?
>
>  
>
We welcome feedback, too!  This is a fine proposal with a great level of 
detail.

>Feature: campus map
>
>* Appointments are associated with coordinates.
>* A shared campus map is available using the same kind of coordinates.
>* The campus map can show details down to rooms within a building, including
>multi-floor buildings.
>* Address translators can map (har!) room identifiers to coordinates.
>
>My Chandler can navigate from an appointment item to a map with the
>coordinates marked.
>
>  
>
As it happens, I know something about campus maps and floorplans.  I 
created the framework for just such a system in 1994 for the University 
of Illinois.  See
    http://www2.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/where_is?bldg=altgeld
    http://www2.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/where_is?bldg=altgeld&room=343

While I absolutely love the idea of people having access to campus 
navigational information, I think it's probably better as a server-side 
application than as a client-side application.  Information about 
floorplans is centralized at the facilities office, so facilities really 
needs to own the information, publish it, and keep it up to date.  Once 
that information is published, then by all means it would be great for 
Chandler to hook into it.

Alas, I have found that putting good floorplans on a site is rarely a 
priority.  Despite the maps/floorplans consistently ranking in the top 
five destinations at www.uiuc.edu, they never added any more buildings' 
floorplans than the 17 that I put in, nor did they ever update those 
17.  The only other interactive floorplan system that I've ever seen was 
an internal one at Adobe.

There are lots of sites that put up maps, but there usually isn't a good 
way to figure out what its GPS coordinates are.

Until there is a lot of data in a standardized format for Chandler to 
slurp in, it's probably premature to invest a lot of energy to create a 
parcel which would use that data.  :-(

IMHO, what we *really* need is standards for how GPS and room 
information should be delievered.  There are at least three parts to 
that job: coming up with a technical solution (perhaps client-side 
imagemaps could somehow be hijacked to convery that data?), writing up a 
spec to explain to others how to do this, and then evangelizing the 
solution.  Those seem outside of OSAF's scope, but it would be great if 
a volunteer could do that!


>More ambitious feature:  You Are Here
>  
>
(This feature depends upon the campus map feature and on GPS 
information, so is even harder...)