I've been waiting for..

James Fee called out two topics that I've been waiting for but failed to monitor. One is the maturation of an OpenLayers-eqsue, Flash-based mapping framework called OpenScales. We like building stuff in Flash and I remember being excited when I saw that OpenScales had started on the OpenLayers mailing list. I'm glad to see it achieve such maturity as an alternative to the ubiquitous OpenLayers (which also rocks).

The other topic relates to a running thought that I've had, "This SLD stuff sucks is too complex and time-consuming to produce for 90% of my needs. I wish there was a KML for styling - something that covers most of what I need but is simple to hack on." At the back of my mind I guess I was thinking about CSS for maps, or a something like a Mapserver Mapfile but for broader use.  Behold Carto. It's quite limited now as far as as the platforms its used in. But I hope similarly easy approaches (below) emerge as a wider alternative to SLD.

From the carto page, "We've been actively using and contributing to the Cascadenik project for several years, so it doesn't come as a surprise that Carto is heavily inspired by Mike's pioneering work in Cascadenik. We hope that our work on Carto will contribute to the emerging field of CSS-like map styling which includes projects like GSS and MapCSS and the GeoServers CSS Module"