anupadkh / kml-samples Goto Github PK

How about a feature where simple forms (in a NetworkLink's description HTML) 
could be submitted back to the containing NetworkLink This would allow for a 
small amount of interactivy within GE without having to spawn the dreaded extra 
browser and move the user in and out of the GE experience.

Requestor: xailor

When I go to Tools->Web sometimes the web browser opens on the bottom half of 
the G.E. map. On some computers it opens an entirely new web browser as a 
separate program. Can we make it so it only opens in the bottom half of the map

Requestor: powwow

It would be really convenient if ScreenOverlays could contain simple html. 
(E.g.: it would be nice if the image could be a hyperlink as well.)

Requestor: Funda ([email protected])

Supporters: tobedetermined! (similar to #3), [email protected]

Allow KML display on Google Map and still allow public (no Google account) user 
to search for an address

Requestor: unknown

If combined with Feature 46, this would allow Camera tags to be referenced by 
Placemarks, and would allow multiple placemarks to reference a single Camera. 
An additional tag (CameraCollection) could be used to associate multiple 
cameras with a single Placemark.

Requestor: Jason Birch

Supporters: Valery35, Rich Treves

In case of path/track, the locations of all points are concatenated between 
<coordinates>...</coordinates>. It could be easier to read and to parse if a 
new mark <coordinate/> exists.
Lists of points could be stored as:
<coordinates>
 <coordinate> #######,#########,# </coordinate> (or <coordinate lat="#####" long="#####" alt="#####" />, cool but hard to keep backward compatibility with this)
 [...] 
 </coordinates>

Requestor: mathprod ([email protected])

When a kml file containing a NetworkLink is loaded, if there is an existing 
NetworkLink with the exact same "href" and ID, the existing NetworkLink should 
be updated, rather than an entirely new unnecessary-bandwidth-hogging redundant 
NetworkLink created.

Requestor: ryanagler ([email protected])

Supporters: [email protected], Insaniac99,xailor

This is a big request, but maybe we could capture mouse events on the map or 
screen overlay and to perform certain actions. Some actions could: show and and 
hide layers, show and hide placemarks, add placemarks to the map, etc. Maybe we 
could also have the ability to generate GUI such as check boxes and text fields 
on the map so we can get user interaction data and execute commands with event 
handling. Perhaps we couuld get user interaction data with a right cIick menu 
We also need the ability to submit web forms.

Requestor: powwow

Supporters: gifrate, ryanagler, tobedetermined

API in Google Earth or way to define a replacement type in a schema for values 
you want displayable, and editable by the user. So if you wanted to place a 
point or polygon on Google Earth but had additional editable information that 
needed to be in XML format, and not just CDATA.

Requestor: tsutton([email protected])

I find the fact that Camera is a singleton child of PlaceMark to be somewhat 
constraining:
 * I would like to use Camera tags on their own to develop a path for my Pro movie creation, where each "view" in the tour may not be associated with a Placemark.
 * I would like to use multiple Camera tags on a single placemark to provide a simple form of animation
 * The current Tour mode does not allow point->point->follow path->point tours. I could use Cameras to provide intermediate positions along a path to work around this limitation
To allow for these cases, I propose that the Camera tag be disassociated from 
the PlaceMark tag, and made into a primary object under the Document tag, 
similar to Style, and that Google Earth be enhanced to recognise the Camera tag 
in its Tour mode.

Requestor: Jason Birch

Supporters: Valery35, Rich Treves

If multiple placemarks are in the exact same geolocation, GE bundles them 
together. It would be nice if a different icon could be specified for this 
bundle effect.

Requestor: Joshua Stewart

It is very hard to use the time slider to go to a specific point in time. Can 
we support in the KML to go to a specific point in time Also, can we add a text 
field or controls to the time control GUI to go to an exact date (instead of 
sliding the control)

Requestor: powwow

Supporters: MarcGG, tobedetermined

Be able to control the Visibility of folder and kml placemarks that load 
directly in Google Maps.

Requestor: ajsansone

A NetworkLinkControl should be allowed to delete NetworkLinks, including its 
calling NetworkLink. This would not be a security issue if the NetworkLinks a 
NetworkLinkControl can delete are limited to those that have the same href

Requestor: ryanagler ([email protected])

Supporters: powwow, Insaniac99, rnisthal,xailor,[email protected]

cIicking on lines and polygons should open a description window lika a cIick on 
a placemark does.

Addendum: You can already do it using ctrl+clik on polygon or linestring

Requestor: Bigga

Supporters: (unofficial), Bernd

How about adding a new Tag that derives from TimePrimative which automatically 
converts UTC time to the users local time zone.

Requestor: [email protected]

Supporters: Gregory

It would be nice to be albe to use POST (I propose a new "httpPost" element) 
requests for Link instead of GET (current done by "httpQuery" element). GET 
limits the size of the data you can send to the server.

Requestor: ryanagler ([email protected])

Supporters: dc3denny

In the KML reference the following is stated: When <Change> is applied to a set 
of coordinates, the new coordinates replace the current coordinates." Would be 
nice if the <Change> tag also allows to add coordinates instead of replacing 
the existing ones.

Requestor: tobedetermined

It is more to Google notebook (Docs) team. If we can uses permanent link to 
notebook bookmarks (or Google documents bookmarks) and paste (upload) texts of 
KML files then we can make and debug very interactive Google GEO projects.

Requestor: Valery35

If you use a LineString together with a networklink it's impossible to add one 
or mulitple points to the path. To update the path you need to update all the 
points.This causes lots of overhead when the path contains lots of coordinates

Requestor: lucvh

When a network link refreshes and the placemarks load again, it flickers. Users 
have complained that the flickering is annoying so we had to increase the time 
it updated so it flickered less. Can we remove the flicker upon upate

Requestor: powwow

Supporters: ryanagler

Right now it appears that only local images used in <description> are added to 
the kmz file.

Requestor: LuciaM

For example: <span style="font-size: x-small">this would look smaller</span>. 
Would also be nice if balloons could use CSS classes. For example: <span 
class="myclass">this would be formatted text</span>. We would need a tag 
similar to <StyleMap> that would let us define global CSS rules for all of the 
balloons in the KML file.

Requestor: OwyheeRover([email protected])

Supporters: Bocha10,dc3denny,[email protected], Jonathan van Tuijl, Manx, jmb

Not all applications need the "directions" module. Not all applications need 
the "layers" module. Can we have a way to remove this from the G.E. application 
This will make applications more customizable. It would be extremely cool if we 
could add our own sidebar/module! :-)

Requestor: powwow

Sofar, it is possible to send <viewFormat> data using the 
<viewRefreshMode>onStop</viewRefreshMode> but this has a low temporal 
resolution and does not work when the user continuously moves. Using the 
onInterval option will help here. Having a subsecond onInterval period will 
also help.

Requestor: tobedetermined

GE needs to be able to fully support HTML forms in description "popups" at 
least such that GE would post said form data to the user's external browser of 
choice the way HREF links send the user to an outside browser..

Requestor: EnvironmentalChemistry

in addition to Feature #5:Event handling capability, GUI capability, modifying 
right-cIick menu, it would be nice to create interactive interfaces as overlays 
as controls for users. Technologies such as javascript, AJAX, XUL, Google web 
toolkit should be included.

Requestor: [email protected]

Supporters: mickmel, ryanagler, Jason Birch (mostly interested in using 
JavaScript to modify the KML DOM dynamically - remote JSON support would be 
nice too),[email protected], Frank4

I'm trying to show a phenomenon that follows the earth's surface. The method 
I'm using is to draw a tessellated polygon and fill it. The outer boundary of 
the polygon follows the earth's surface very well, but the fill color doesn't - 
high points poke through the fill. Example is at

http://www.thewebsitedoctor.net/avalanche/UtahAvalancheMap.kmz

It would be nice to have some way to clamp the fill to the ground.

Requestor: Walt Haas

Supporters: Jeff Daily

Allow the the reference of an icon href for Folder and NetworkLink entities to 
have the icon dispaly in the browser.

Requestor: xailor

This may be part of Plus or Pro, but I can't tell from the smallish narratives 
about the specific product lines on the GE website.
Currently, I use the standard Time Series capabilities in KML 
(TimeSpan/TimeStamp) to temporally control things that have no instantaneous 
relation to now as real-time. For example, I might be rolling through Civil War 
battles that are each tagged with a TimeSpan, which works nicely for that 
application because it (obviously) occurred in the past and playing through the 
time animation is anchored in history.
What I think would be interesting and quite useful (and honestly am astonished 
was not the very first thought when the idea of incorporating Time into GE 
first materialized), would be the ability to synch the Time functions with the 
real current time for a user.
I do quite of bit of KML scenario development that involves various forms of 
forecasted position data that include precise time elements. If I have a series 
of events for today, I would like to be able to kick off the time animation run 
and have it move in lock-step with the current real time. This would make 
events pop into and out of GE based on whatever associated Time element matches 
whatever time it is "right now".

Requestor: PlannerX ([email protected])

Supporters: Geoff

Would like to be able to distribute KMZ files with a "secure" feature so that 
recipients/viewers can see the information included in the placemark, but can 
not edit or manipulate the underlying data.

Requestor: StudleyGIS

Supporters: rnisthal

I have a simple data set (imported into GE Plus with a CSV file). When I export 
to KML, it is not Maps compatible--"could not be displayed" error.

Requestor: Dr. E. B.

The name next to the placemark (that identifies the placemark) fades in an out 
and moves around the icon when you zoom in and out. When there are hundreds of 
icons this can get annoying. Can you make this name optional We are generating 
text around the icon we make and the automatic text G.E. produces interferes 
with it.

If I understand this correctly, its already possible with the <LabelStyle> tag, 
you can even make it hover only using the StyleMap - BarryHunter 
LableStyle does not have an "on" or "off" for the label. Unless we can scale 
the label to "0" - powwow 
Yes use scale 0 or visisblity (part of the colour tag) to totally transparent. 
- BarryBunter

Requestor: powwow

Right now we are generating pictures containing text and showing them as 
overlays. It would be greatly beneficial if we could send ASCII text and Google 
Earth could display them as a screen overlay to save bandwidth. If we could 
even use HTML so we could adjust the text look and feel it would be even better!

Requestor: powwow

Supporters: tobedetermined,xailor, [email protected], CraigT

This just adds clutter and confusion. An NetworkLinkControl update is not a 
place on the map, and its caller should be automatically deleted from temporary 
places as soon as the Update is done if there is no refreshInterval specified.

Requestor: ryanagler ([email protected])

Supporters: rnisthal

It would be extremely useful and more user-friendly if in addition to users 
being able to set touring parameters (camera angle, range, speed) they could be 
set directly from KML so that when the PLAY button was cIicked these parameters 
were used.

Addendum: We've now test-marketed a demo GE app among potential users and the 
common complaint is that it's too cumbersome. While we've found creative ways 
to use Network Links to remind users how to set-up their GE environment, all of 
this additional work has turned them off to GE. Being able to set touring 
parameters dynamically through our KML files would be a great help.

This is a big one... need to be able to specify tour speed and pop-up show 
times from KML!

Requestor: [email protected]

Supporters: Lance

This is different from just omitting the <end> tag. During animation, the 
rendering of a data set is controlled by the <begin> tag. If an <end> tag 
exists, then the data set will stop being rendered once the time slider window 
no longer includes the date specified by the <end> tag. However, what I am 
suggesting is that a feature be added to allow the end time of a data set to be 
determined by the <begin> time of the next data set in a sequence. Possibly 
this could be accomplished by using the ID attribute so that more recent data 
sets having the same ID replace older data sets. This would be useful when the 
<begin> and <end> times are not periodic. The <begin> time is known when the 
data is processed, but the <end> time will not be known until the next data set 
is processed.

Requestor: drafnel

Would be nice to get/set the ID, the Description and the Location of IFeature 
instances. With API it's possible to search a feature by its HREF/ID but not 
get the HREF of an highlighted feature, strange isn't it. It would also be 
usefull that API allow to edit the location of a marker or of a path without 
generate and load a new KML.

a) IApplicationGE should have a GetFeatureById(id) method which allow to use 
the <Feature id=### />. Due to many KML files can be loaded, it can exist more 
than one elements for an Id, so GetFeatureById() return the fist element with 
the wanted ID, assuming all features have a GUID in a collection of KML files. 
IApplicationGE::GetFeatureByHRef(href) need to know the loaded KML files 
(href=filename#id), so IApplicationGE should provide a collection which 
contains the filepath of loaded KML files.
b) IFeatureGE should have ID, Location, Description (+ metadata string if 
possible) and Style get/set properties. Style could be the ID or the href of a 
defined style. The HideShowDescriptionBalloons() methods could be added to 
IFeatureGE
c) IApplicationGE could also provide a collection of available style, so 
provide a IStyleGE class with ID get property and iconstyle, linecolor, 
linewidth, labelcolor, labelsize get/set properties.
Maybe not feasible, strongly dependant of the current implementation
d) For track/path representation, IFeatureGE should provide a collection of 
point location which contains each point of the path as an IPointOnTerrainGE 
instance. If possible a new class (IPathGE or something like that) derivated 
from IFeatureCollectionGE and IFeatureGE and dedicated for path/track handling 
could be added, with ID, description (+metadata) and Style get/set properties.
e) Furthermore It may be usefull if IApplicationGE::LoadKmlData() returns a 
IFeatureCollectionGE which contain the features of the KML file. The collection 
in part a) could contain the filepath and the a reference to the feature 
collection associated with loaded KML files.
f) Add event handling capabilities (join feature request #5). For IFeatureGE, 
event cIick, MouseOver, MouseLeave (feasible with Highlight method),...
I don't know exactly how to implement this, but it can works with delegate or 
function pointer...

Requestor: mathprod ([email protected])

Supporters: ryanagler

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Requestor: Mainfan

This is a big user issue. If a user opens a placemark balloon, the balloon 
could become destroyed when the network link refreshes. Everyone who uses the 
system complains about it. Maybe we can have a flag of some sort to keep the 
balloon open even if the network link is refreshed

Requestor: powwow, Frank4

Supporters: ryanagler,xailor, ZeeroK

It would be nice if we could draw dashed (or dotted, etc.) lines on Google 
Earth.

dashed and dotted line styles are essential to making our geologic maps into 
kml overlays!

Requestor: OwyheeRover([email protected])

Supporters: Buck

Lance, Kent, The Entire Utah Geological Survey

In KML 2.2 i see link to style as http://.../file.kml#id and link from balloon 
to need placemark. I hope we can use this feature from Network link.

Requestor: Valery35

See Fade to region Extent in http://earth.google.com/kml/kml_21tutorial.html

Requestor: Valery35

It would be really nice to be able to copy the full decimal/DMS coordinates of 
the cursor location by simply right mouse cIicking and selecting an option like 
"copy coordinates".

Requestor: EnvironmentalChemistry

Supporters: Frank4

I noticed there was a third party tool that embedded Google Earth in an 
I.E./Firefox web browser. They basically used a Google Earth dll and make a 
Mozillaplugin + ActiveX control out of it. It was pretty neat to see it in 
Internet Explorer/Firefox. Can you officially support this feature

Requestor: powwow

Supporters: gifrate, ryanagler,luca63, tobedetermined, [email protected], 
Frank4

When adding an KML overlay (using GGeoXml) to a google map, it would be really 
handy if there was some way to automatically center the map on this, and maybe 
even set the zoom to a level where the entire content of the KML was visible - 
like implemented by EGeoXml.

Requestor: Truck3r

Extend <Style> and <styleUrl> so that they can be contained by any <Geometry>. 
That way, if a placemark contained both a polygon and a linestring, each could 
have its own weight and color. Currently, to have individual colors, the shapes 
must be separated into separate placemarks. The reasons for having them 
combined into one placemark are a) all elements would highlight together when 
the icon is moused-over, and b) the users would see just one placemark listed 
in the folder view, not several.

Requestor: OwyheeRover([email protected])

Supporters: Jeff, Matelot

To speed large data sets, GE does not accept HTTP GZIP streamed data from 
NetworkLinks. Almost all browsers (interactive and non) accept GZIP data 
streams, GE should definetely join them.

Addendum: except GE supports KMZ which already is a compressed datastream :) - 
barryhunter

Addendum: But pkzip-style compression format is not formally streamable nor 
concatenatable and why browsers don't support this format.

Requestor: xailor

It would be nice if there was a LineStyle element that could be turned on which 
would inert arrows along a LineString so that you could indicate the 
LineString's direction of travel.

I am regularly mapping very precise paths (including adresses, longitudes, 
latitudes, directions, lengths, etc). The only way I can tell them apart from 
one another is by creating folders/groups (per path, per week, per day, etc), 
allocating them a different color each and then connecting them with lines. I 
just wish I could use arrows to make the paths more visual (instead of adding a 
unique incrementing number).

Requestor: ryanagler ([email protected])

Supporters: Simon Charest ([email protected]), rnisthal

It would be useful to be able to include local text or even html documents 
directly in the kmz package so they need not be online.

Requestor: LuciaM