Student Originated Software 1997-1998 Fall Quarter
		A Software Engineering Course at The Evergreen State College

Project Proposal Project Name or Current Identifier: Our World: A Living Atlas, Bruce Haley, Tashkent-Seattle Sister Cities Outside Contact: Bruce Haley Customer Organization (or user base): Purpose of System: Following are some quick notes I threw together describing how the "Our World: A Living Atlas" web site might look and operate. I do not pretend they are comprehensive or organized. Regard them as ideas to get the ball rolling. (This description does not have to apply strictly to a Worldwide Web site. It could also describe a system that could be installed and run on an individual PC, be used by a single person, operate over a network or be used exclusively by any group or enterprise.) WHAT THE SITE PROVIDES A visitor to the "Our World" site would be presented with a view of the whole earth. A list of themes could be browsed and an individual theme selected. Once the theme was selected, dots, icons, polygons or other graphics would be overlaid on the earth, indicating points of interest ("POI"s). When a POI was picked by clicking on it, information pertaining to that POI would be presented. The information could be almost anything -- links to web URLs, images, text, videos, or a combination of these. From the initial whole-earth view, the visitor could zoom or pan to any location to view any spot at any scale. This would be useful where there were dense clusters of POIs so individual POIs could be picked. Thematic content could consist purely of images. For instance, for the theme, "Traditional Clothing", photos could be submitted showing people in traditional clothing, each keyed to its particular geographical location. A visitor could click a POI on the map and see the photos for that location. A practically endless variety of themes with visual content could be presented, such as "Faces", "Foods", "Houses", "Plants", "Animals", "Landscapes", "Products", "Occupations", "Geology". Or a theme could consist entirely of web sites -- for example, college and university web sites. Clicking on a POI would go to the web site belonging to that college or university. Or a theme could consist of text and images -- for example, backpacker tips. Clicking on a POI anywhere would bring up a page written by a backpacker who had been to that spot, describing what to see and where to eat and where to stay the night. It might include a picture for illustration. Possible themes could be: Plants and animals Human cultures Geography Geology Weather Political systems Trade and industry Tourist attractions Vacation resorts Bed-and-breakfasts Religions Volunteerism Real estate Places to stay Pen pals Personal web sites Internet public access sites World relief efforts Famine & disease statistics Endangered species Et cetera SUBMISSIONS In addition to viewing material and visiting linked web pages, a visitor could submit information to the Living Atlas that would be displayed for others to browse. This is the "living" part of the atlas: just like the worldwide web itself, this atlas could be maintained and updated daily by people all over the world. It could make the atlas as up-to-date as any atlas could possibly be. People would be able to submit various types of information to the "Our World Living Atlas" database. They would be able to submit material to one of the already existing pre-defined themes. Or they would be able to submit a new theme definition. SUBMITTING A THEME DEFINITION A theme definition might consist of the following: Title This is what is seen when a visitor selects a theme. Description This describes in detail what kinds of submitted materials will qualify for inclusion in the theme. POI indicator types Flag indicates whether POI indicators are Icons, Text, Polylines, or combinations of these. Icon graphics The actual bitmap(s) defining the POI indicator icon(s). Material types Flag indicates what types of materials are to be stored in the Living Atlas database: URLs, Text, Images, Video Name and contact information for the theme definer and for the "theme monitor". Access control and password information -- both for the monitor and for the submitters. SUBMITTING TO A THEME Different themes would have different levels of access control, depending upon the nature of the theme. Some themes, for example the "Amnesty International's Political Prisoners Inventory" theme, would accept submissions by password only and be under the complete control of Amnesty International. Some themes, for example, "Personal web sites", would allow anyone to make a submission. Before such a submission was put online, a "theme monitor" person might review each submitted URL to verify that it met the criteria of the theme. A submitter of material for a particular theme would be required to do two things. First, the submitter would have to pick a point on a map representing the Point Of Interest (POI) that pertains to the submission. (It would be stored as latitude-longitude information.) The scope of the POI would possibly also need to be indicated: whether the POI represented a single point on the earth or represented a larger area such as a city or a country or a region. Second, the submitter would need to enter the information pertaining to the POI. Such information might include a text entry, the URL to a web page or image or video, an image, or a video clip. Or map overlay information such as a line representing a bicycle route. NGOs could submit their favorite information to the site for others to see. For instance, Amnesty International could submit information about how many political prisoners were in the world and where they were. Viewing that theme, a visitor would see the world map bearing dots (or "prisoner" icons). Dots could be sized or clustered in proportion to the number of prisoners at each location. World hunger groups could submit how many people are currently dying of starvation and where they are located. Clicking on a POI could bring forth web page URLs of assistance organizations, images of the starving people, URLs of news reports, e-mail addresses of contacts for getting involved, etc. Brief Description of System Functionality: see above Hardware and Software Platform: Disk storage capacity limitations may prevent storing in the Living Atlas database those kinds of information requiring large amounts of space, such as images and especially videos. Work-arounds could be to store URLs to those items, so that they may still be presented on visitors' screens, but simply be loaded from their storage locations elsewhere on the web. The map displays with the POI icons might be put up in different ways. Technical tradeoffs are: display speeds versus simplicity of implementation. A simple implementation might just download bitmap images of maps with the icons already placed. That could result in slower performance and more limited zooming and panning options. A more technically complicated implementation might use Java applets to first put up the base map, then place the icons on it. Then the map could be downloaded in vector form -- potentially shortening download time as well as allowing very flexible zooming and panning without further downloading. To reduce development time, it may make sense to select an existing web database engine or mapping engine to start with and build upon. The Living Atlas system would possibly reside on a Windows NT Server platform. Development might be in C, C++, HTML, and Java. Minimum System: The Minimal System might be limited to one or two pre-selected themes. Submitting new themes would not initially be accommodated. The pre-selected themes would be in formats that would be easy to implement -- such as only allowing a URL and some descriptive text to be submitted for each POI. The Minimal System might have simplified mapping capabilities. The earth could be broken down into a discrete number of separate maps. Each map could be stored simply as a bitmap. Only 3 zoom levels would be permitted. The overlaying of POI icons could be accomplished at the server and a single combined bitmap containing the map plus the icons could be presented. Or -- instead of simplified mapping capabilities, a copy of a pre-existing online map display software system could be obtained and used for the project. Maybe something like the Xerox PARC map viewer (see http://mapweb.parc.xerox.com/map). Except that it's monochrome, has no labeling, and no solid fill. Potential -- Skills/Learning/Job: Follow-On Projects: Other Pertinent Information( user interface, etc.):