Canvas MapStructure: Difference between revisions

{{Note|This article is intended for people wanting to add custom mapping/charting displays to FlightGear (aircraft, GUI dialogs, HUDs etc) - it assumes familiarity with [[Nasal]] scripting, [[Object Oriented Programming with Nasal]] and [[Canvas]] - while an existing chart layer (e.g. to show VORs/NDBs or DMEs) can be easily added and used by non-programmers within a few minutes, creating new MapStructure layers requires additional knowledge which is detailed below. In its simplest form, MapStructure is just a library of a handful of existing layers (navaids, traffic) that can be easily -and quickly- reused for all kinds of different purposes. For people familiar with Nasal coding, MapStructure is also a framework to create new fully reusable layers with integrated support for caching, resource management (listener/timers) and efficient searching/updating.

For FlightGear versions <nowiki>>=</nowiki> 3.3+, there will also be a [[Canvas Widgets|Canvas Widget]] to easily add MapStructure-based maps to any Canvas dialog and/or to Canvas MFDs that internally use the Canvas GUI framework. Another novelty that we're currently exploring is extending the framework such that GUI-based creation/editing/customization of layers becomes a first-class concept, e.g. to create a weather or tutorial/missions GUI editor: see [[#Porting the map dialog]].}}

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