[OpenLayers-Users] question

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 02:59:37PM +0200, Ondra Zara wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> we are using OpenLayers as one of mapping providers in our opensource 
> project. Our demonstration map, located at 
> http://demo.openlinksw.com/DAV/home/demo/Public/Reports/MapMashups/employee_sales_by_ship_country_pivot_openlayers_all.xml 
>   (demo/demo), recently stopped working.

I'm very sorry to hear that -- hopefully we can work out why this is
happening and help you fix it.

> 1. Were there any recent changes to API which might cause these issues?

The version of the code you are using is the 1.0 version, which has not
changed since its release several weeks ago. We do our best to ensure
that the /api/OpenLayers.js code is always in a state where it is
working, and if we make changes that would break the API at any time, we
will first inform users before changing that URL, and give ample time to
modify applications as needed.

It seems that the only reason for this problem must be related to some
change in your code, but I'm not sure what it would be -- and it seems
likely that it's a bug in OpenLayers, because no matter what, you
shouldn't be able to cause the problem you did.

> 2. Is it somehow possible to offer an API which can be used locally (and 
> modified, debugged etc.)?

Absolutely. The reason for the obfuscated code, which is obviously
making your issue more difficult to debug, is that it makes the download
much quicker, but when in development, this is obviously not neccesary
given the difficult it causes in debugging.

You have several options: 
 * Download the 1.0 release: http://openlayers.org/download/OpenLayers-1.0.tar.gz
   Inside the release, you will find a 'lib' directory, with an
   OpenLayers.js inside of it. If you put this entire directory in
   someplace that is web accessible, and then change your 
   /api/OpenLayers.js URL to point to the locally hosted
   lib/OpenLayers.js version, you will be using a version of OpenLayers
   which is split into multiple files and is not obfuscated.
 * Use the Development version: At all times, the most recent version of 
   OpenLayers (bugs and all) is available from /dev/lib/OpenLayers.js.
   This version is, like the release, not obfuscated. However, this
   version should not be used for production: it changes rapidly, and
   changes in the short term are occasionally not backwards compatible,
   nor are all the kinks neccesarily always worked out.
 * Download a local copy of Subversion: Using a subversion client, you
   can download the OpenLayers code directly from
   http://svn.openlayers.org/trunk/openlayers .

Unfortunately, I must admit that attempting to debug this with the
compressed version of the OpenLayers code is very difficult, especially
given the complexity of your application. However, I would like to help
you see this resolved, so if you can move to a non-singlefile version of
the OpenLayers code somehow, we can look further into why exactly this
might be happening.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer