This is a roadmap proposal for OpenScales

Summary

Our goal is to implement some of OpenLayers functionalities, on an OpenSource and modular ActionScript3 map client, with great vector performances. Middle/Long term vision is to have a single solution for Web/mobile/3D/Rich clients.

Changelog

OpenScales 1.0 : first official release, beta quality (09/21/2009)

Initially based on the FlexLayers codebase
Tons of fixes and improvements (150 issues closed !)
WMS, WMSC, WFS, OpenStretMap layers support
More documentation
Code design improvements
Performance improvements
Flex wrapper allow to create OpenScales powered Flex application easily
Flex components in addition to pure ActionScrip3 ones

More details on the announcement on our discussion group.

OpenScales 1.1 : production ready (12/10/2009)

OpenScales can be configured with an XML configuration file, useful to get dynamics map when passed as parameter to the compiled SWF
Drawing features
IGN GeoRM support
More unit tests
KML support (Placemark only)
Vector rendering 10x more efficient compared to OpenScales 1.0
Memory leak fixes
Simple picture layer
Powerful Style API
Better popup support
API cleanup
Single tile WMS fixes
Tons of bugfixes, refactoring and API cleanup

OpenScales 1.2 : refactoring only, no new functionalities

Feature drawing refactoring
Replace current geometries (inherited from OpenLayers) by an independent AS3 GeoAPI module.
Dependency injection with Spring ActionScript
Map rotation
Vector instead Array
More and more testing

OpenScales 1.3

Support more format
- WFS 1.1 and GML3
- WMS 1.3
- Better KML support

OpenScales 1.4 : not started

WFS-T support
Support AMF3 vector protocol
3D support

Software design

Software design will be driven with KISS (Keep It Simple And Stupid), DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles, with performances in mind.

OpenLayer API

We have start from openlayers API but will change some things described in ChangesCompareToOpenLayers

Pure AS3 or Flex

openscales-core only depends on pure ActionScript3 without Flex dependencies for performances and SWF size reasons.

openscales-fx bring Flex supports (wrapper, controls ...)

Modular design

Adding new functionalities will not cause performance and project size problems if we have a good modular design. We should design OpenScales to be architectured and a small core that will load functionalities in remote SWF (pure AS3 or Flex modules).

Build system

It is important to have an open source build system in order to avoid the need for non free program like Flex Builder, even if it is very powerful to develop with such tool. It must remain a choice.

It is also important to be able to build with a continuous build system the project.

Since Flex sdk has been open sourced by Adobe, and that there is some powerful solutions to build the project like Maven plugin Flex mojo. It is possible de build pure AS3 projects with it.

Ant is another option, but if we use an highly modular architecture, Maven and its multi module functionalities may be very useful.

It allows us to build asdoc automatically.

Dependency Injection

We currently do not use dependency injection framework, but I think we will use it in a far future.

Spring ActionScript is a good candidate.

Events

In order to have loose coupling between components, we use an event communication system based on using the Map as an event bus and strongly typed events.

Flex support

OpenScales support efficient development based on Flex components.

OpenScales

Roadmap