BOF "GeoJQuery" at FOSSGIS 2010

After first thoughts about a project, where the AJAX-Javascript Library JQuery is linked to OpenLayers at the OpenLayers BOF at the FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney, we initialized a BOF with the workoing title "GeoJQuery" at the FOSSGIS (local chapter Germany conference) this week in Osnabrück.

Attendants were (not complete, I have to find the cards ;-)) Andreas Hocevar Marc Jansen Till Adams Thorsten Müller Volker Mische Arnulf Christl Jan Schorn Pirmin Kalberer (and 8 others, sorry at the moment...)

Several attendants already worked with JQuery as an extension to OpenLayers based mapping solutions. Also the "GQuery (gquery)" idea shows, that there are already some solutions and probalby some interest in realizing something like GeoJQuery (Andreas advised us to contact them). Probably the BOF has been the hour of birth for a new OpenSource project.

Our core idea is not to make a simple copy of Geoext with JQuery. Basic idea is an Geo extension for JQuery, which will be setup with OpenLayers for the mapping components first, but where in principle the mapping component could only be replacable. This requires a very close docking to jQuery.

There is already a WIKI on geojquery.org. Please feel free and get involved.

1. GeoJQuery is not a wrap of GeoExt based on JQuery. 2. GeoJQuery should become a JQuery plug-in. 3. OpenLayers mapping core will be used as the first implementation, others should be possible. 4. Easy generation of a map, no expert knowledge of OpenLayers (e.g. projections, layers, controls) is required.

One advice from Andreas was not to live with inconsistences in OpenLayers, so do not built work-arounds, please fix them in OpenLayers.

ToDos & next steps 1. contact JQuery community, check for possibility of plugin, name "GeoJQuery" (Till) 2. setup development environment on terrestris server (Till) 3. contact developpers of Gquery and try to get them involved (Till) 4. setup mailing list on osgeo-server (Arnulf) 5. early relase of first 0.001 release (Volker, Marc, Thorsten)