We start the new year with a double-header release of:
- MapGuide Maestro 6.0m13
- mapguide-react-layout 0.14.10
What prompted these new releases other than (it's long overdue)?
Namely, it is to do with a notification I received about the coming deprecation (and eventual shutdown) of the
epsg.io service that both pieces of software use to do proj4 projection lookups for any given EPSG code. This service will shutdown in Feburary (next month) and transition over to the
MapTiler coordinates API. This new API requires an API key to use their services.
In the context of these 2 projects, the API key requirement introduces too much friction.
- If I take up the offer to use MapTiler, I have to register and bake my API key into both Maestro and mapguide-react-layout and am now responsible for API usage/monitoring under this key from users I have no control over. Last thing I want to deal with is bug reports from users because, let's say for example: proj4 lookup is broken because the API is no longer accessible for my API key due to quota exceeded. I just don't want to deal with such a scenario.
- Which means the alternative is to change the code to the extent that users can "bring their own API key", taking such API key usage/monitoring concerns out of my hands. This too is also too much hassle. I just want to do EPSG code to proj4 lookups nothing more nothing less!
If I was building a bespoke/custom mapping application for a client with EPSG > proj4 lookup functionality, then this API key requirement would not have been an issue, but this is not the case here.
So in light of these concerns, instead of moving to MapTiler coordinates. Instead I have opted to use
spatialreference.org to do EPSG -> proj4 lookups. No API keys are required there.
So since this was the main driver for needing to put out new releases of MapGuide Maestro and mapguide-react-layout, we might as well take this opportunity to lump in some other fixes and minor changes, which are detailed below.
mapguide-react-layout changes
(reworked) Stamen and (new) StadiaMaps support
Stamen tiled layer support was broken for some time since it was taken over by Stadia Maps.
I had already taken care of this in the VSCode map preview extension which had the same problem. But for mapguide-react-layout, the fix was a bit different due to it not using the latest version of OpenLayers and it is too much work right now to update to the latest OpenLayers in mapguide-react-layout.
So what was done for mapguide-react-layout instead is to create these Stamen tile layers as XYZ layers instead of using the (now broken for that OL release) Stamen tile source. This works because Stamen tiles are ultimately tilesets using the XYZ web mercator scheme. The only other changes is that a Stadia Maps API key is required. So if your appdef defines one or more Stamen tile layers and you didn't specify an API key, you'll get the same startup warning you get when you have Bing Maps layers and didn't specify a Bing Maps API key
But if you do provide a Stadia Maps API key, you'll get the Stamen layers you've seen before.
Since a Stadia Maps API key is now required, we've also added support for other tilesets provided by Stadia Maps, like:
Alidade Smooth
Alidade Satellite
Outdoors
So if you are loading your mapguide-react-layout viewer from a Flexible Layout document, where do you need to specify this new Stadia Maps API key?
That's where the new release of MapGuide Maestro comes in to help!
MapGuide Maestro Changes
Stamen Maps (changed) and Stadia Maps (new) support
The Fusion Editor has reworked Stamen Maps support and added support for Stadia Maps
You'll notice that Stamen and Stadia Maps have 2 variants for every layer.
- A specialized version
- An XYZ layer variant ("... as XYZ")
What is the deal with this?
This was done so that if you are still authoring Flexible Layouts for Fusion instead of mapguide-react-layout, you can still view Stamen and Stadia Maps layers in Fusion through the existing XYZ layer support that is available in Fusion as demonstrated in the screenshot below, using the Stadia Maps alidade_smooth_dark tileset + API key.
So depending on the context:
If you are authoring a Flexible Layout for Fusion, choose the "... as XYZ" version and enter the Stadia Maps API key when prompted.
Otherwise, if you are authoring a Flexible Layout for mapguide-react-layout, choose the specialized version and enter the Stadia Maps API key in the provided field
This release of mapguide-react-layout will read the Stadia Maps API key from this new setting in the Flexible Layout when initializing with Stamen and Stadia Maps tile layers.
Using spatialreference.org for EPSG > proj4 lookups
As stated above, the projection management dialog of the Fusion Editor now uses spatialreference.org for resolving proj4 strings from EPSG codes
- WMS Feature Source Editor: Improved the responsiveness and usability of the Advanced Configuration Dialog
- You can finally copy (ctrl-c) content in the IronPython console!!! You can now truly iterate on automation scripts by finally being able to copy the snippets of working Python code you just entered and eval-ed.
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