Map Of London

After extensive testing, it looks like recent updates to Open Layers made the FeatureOverlay object a bit flaky. Since I don't really need it, I've rewritten all the highlighting code to get rid of it. This took a few hours and some serious testing, but the result is a bit cleaner, simpler and more maintainable.

This apparently-stable version of the map has now been ported to the live site as the "experimental" Agas Map, so I can keep working and breaking the dev version while people use the live one.

I've finished preparing the map for a live beta, so people can test and work with a stable version while I hack at the dev one. I've set it up so that it integrates nicely with the old map, so that where a location has a new map shape, that's what we use, but where there isn't one but there is data for the old map, that gets used instead. Waiting on approval to move that over. IN the process I found and fixed one more bug caused by an API change in Open Layers.

I've written half of a new search system which allows fine filtering based on the document taxonomy. I have the nesting/expansion and checkbox status stuff all working on the search page, and the right cats are being submitted to the search; the next stage is reconstituting the category choices in the page when it's reloaded, which is not easy. I'm also still using the old searching code, which I'm unhappy with (it's slow). I had one shot at optimizing it through using eval, which didn't help much, but now I'm thinking that if I re-order the predicates so that the text search comes first, and then the document filtering is done on a much smaller set of documents, the indexes should work better.

After creating a page for searching locations only (making one generic and two "specialized" search pages), we decided it's worth building a search page which incorporates all the categories as nested structures of checkboxes. I've made a start on that.

The new build of OpenLayers I injected yesterday turned out to have an API change (dispatchChangeEvent() now seems to be called changed()). Made fixes and tested.

Added the ability to pass a location as a "container" and have all contained or contiguous features automatically turned on. OL currently has no test for intersection of geometries, just for intersection of a geometry and an extent (rectangle), so that's what I'm using; but an email discussion has generated a possible approach to testing geometry intersection in a quick-and-dirty way, until this function appears in OL (or in case it never does). Will implement when there's time.

Worked for a while to get an optimal layout and behaviour for the Locations panel, after bugs in positioning reported by JJ and some weird scrolling behaviour in Opera. I think everything is now working except for an obvious bug in the Linux version of Opera. Tested on other platforms, including IE and Safari.

Made the search work more intuitively so that categories with no hits are completely hidden; fixed and refined some of the colour choices for categories; and added a whole bunch more streets from the north east.

It's clear that some categories will need to be rendered in particular ways; I've implemented a system for doing this, and used the streets and wards (only one ward so far) for piloting it. Seems to be working well.

Also added a few more streets.

I took a crack at outlining the river, but double-clicked accidentally and lost the ability to continue the edit. No time right now to get it committed, so here's the surface I have right now - it isn't a useless addition, it just isn't complete. If it gets added to the DB it can be cloned/edited later.

<surface>
<graphic url="agas_full.jpg"/>
<zone xml:id="THAM2_agas" points="853,9437 1043,8731 1279,8043 1343,7839 1527,7423 1691,7087 1879,6835 1885,6819 1953,6712 2006,6650 2232,6405 2409,6230 2623,6027 2764,5891 2861,5813 2969,5743 2974,5711 3010,5690 3169,5599 3200,5609 3465,5489 3596,5450 3810,5425 3964,5406 4091,5369 4277,5355 4417,5353 4644,5359 4947,5388 5133,5413 5447,5467 6147,5642 6188,5664 7158,5896 7404,5959 7986,6092 8341,6156 9006,6255 9112,6273 9443,6303 10119,6371 10421,6407 10608,6451 10652,6448 10771,6485 11121,6555 11189,6555 11339,6575 11395,6620 11489,6647 11599,6648 11766,6664 12237,6682 12525,6667 12529,6640 12760,6646 12772,6664 13266,6663 13269,6567 13702,6575 13784,6686 14211,6715 14197,6679 14227,6683 14215,6511 14325,6510 14385,6527 14448,6583 14472,6694 14468,6741 14646,6756 14667,6721 14703,6721 14721,6733 14733,6762 14976,6883 15041,6908 15352,7010 15422,7027 15578,7060 16232,7132 16597,7165 18277,7197 19461,7293 20789,7277 22005,7245 23605,7229 24661,7213 25125,7197 25093,8461 19109,8525 17077,8445 15209,8279 15117,8263 13421,8087 12905,8051 11757,7995 11157,7981 9269,7757 7797,7421 5797,6861 5109,6695 4899,6679 4827,6683 4405,6733 3717,6989 3347,7215 3243,7303 3191,7339 2983,7543 2847,7743 2667,8127 2597,8333 2527,8483 2447,8759 2435,8835 2309,9437 853,9437"/>
</surface>

I originally started this post after mapping about 215 places around Christmas 2014, and I've since added to it every time I found more issues when converting data from the old map. This is the list of issues that currently need to be addressed:

• SOLVED: JOIN1: Joiners' Hall, missing from current documents. JJ thinks they were absorbed into the Carpenters.
• LOND3: Once "London Wall", which constitutes many separate polygons on the original, it's now identified as "London Wall (street)", which is not what the SVG outlines are showing.
• STKA2 (St Katharine's Hermitage): the original outline is very rough and does not show what buildings should and shouldn't be included. I have guessed, based on what looks like it is inside the bounds of the piece of land.
• SCOT1: Scotland Yard. As with STKA2, the outline on SVG map is very slapdash, and doesn't provide enough accuracy to know whether buildings intersected should be included, or whether only the open land area constitutes Scotland Yard. Again, I have guessed, and included the buildings clearly on the piece of enclosed land.
• HOLB2 (Holborn Bars): the actual Bars (a toll gate originally) are not shown on the map; instead, the words "The bares" appears. As in the SVG, I have outlined the words, but this contrasts with my normal practise of leaving textual legends out of location shapes.
• INNE1 (Inner Temple): I have followed the original outline from the SVG, but the word "Temple" appears on the roof of a building which is outside the shape boundaries (north side). Should it be included?
• BERM1 (Bermondsey Street) appears to be labelled as "Kent Str" on the map.
• STMA25 (street St. Martin's Le Grand has disappeared) -- see my email to the team 2015-01-11.
• I think CAMO1 and CAMO2 are the same street. The first, which runs from Bevis Marks to Bishopsgate Street (taken from the SVG), has an empty document; the second has a full writeup. I suggest we migrate the content of 2 into 1, then deprecate the CAMO2 id.
• CLER2 and CLEK1 seem to be the same place (per KMF).
• Cornhill and Cornhill Street -- are they really distinct?
• CHUR2 was originally Church Lane, and I believe this is right; in the location file, it's been renamed to Church Alley (Langbourne Ward), but I suspect CHUR1 is that, not CHUR2.
• MAID1 and MAID2 are a mess. MAID1 is described as "shared between Cripplegate Ward, Aldersgate Ward, and Farringdon Within. It ran west from Wood Street, and "originated as a trackway across the Covent Garden" (Bebbington 210) to St. Martin’s Lane." On Agas, where it is labelled "Mayden St", it runs west from Wood but goes nowhere near St Martin's Lane (for which there are many candidates, but none nearby); the original SVG had it runnint to Forster Lane, which is where it terminates (provisionally) on our new Agas. MAID2, which used to be the street labelled on Agas "Maidenhed Lane", running between Old Change and Friday Street (OLDC1 and FRID1), has had its xml:id taken over by the Maidenhead Inn, about which there is no information. I believe there was a Maidenhead Lane, as Agas says, and that it needs an id (perhaps MAID3). Our write-up of DIST1 (Distaff Lane), combined with info from Stow and from the Leake's Survey Map (see BHO) suggests that the street running east-west was known both as Maiden Lane and as Distaff Lane; and that the street going off it, labelled "Distaff Lane" on Agas, was also known as "Little Distaff Lane". I suggest we create MAID3, and explain all this in the abstract, linking also to DIST1, which should probably include the information that it was also known as "Little Distaff Lane".
• OLDF2 says "The Agas Map shows the church of St. Mary Somerset blocking the end of the street." But it doesn't. The street runs clear through to Thames Street past the church.
• STMI2 (St. Michael's Lane) terminates at a seam on our current map and on the original SVG version. However, I believe it should continue south to meet Thames Street, as it does on Leake's map. I also believe that Crooked Lane should join up with it; this seems clear from our map and is explicit on Leake's.
• LITT6 (Little St. Thomas Apostles) is on the SVG what is labelled "St. Thomas Lane" on Agas; it runs from Bow Lane about two thirds of the way to Tower Royal. That stretch is currently part of Turnbase Lane, which is shown running the whole way across. However, Leake also labels that whole stretch "St. Thomas Lane", so there is some confusion here. The name "St. Thomas Lane" was obviously in use both in Agas's time and after the Fire. Some research is needed to sort this out. If there was no street called "Little St. Thomas Apostles" then LITT6 should be deleted, and it should be clarified in TURN2 that this street seems to have had two names.