Description
Summary
- What does this package do? (explain in 50 words or less):
Purpose: Create geographic and no-geographic map tile sets from R.
- Paste the full DESCRIPTION file inside a code block below:
Package: tiler
Version: 0.2.0
Title: Create Geographic and Non-Geographic Map Tiles
Description: Creates geographic map tiles from geospatial map files or non-geographic map tiles from simple image files. This package provides a tile generator function for creating map tile sets for use with packages such as 'leaflet'. In addition to generating map tiles based on a common raster layer source, it also handles the non-geographic edge case, producing map tiles from arbitrary images. These map tiles, which have a non-geographic, simple coordinate reference system (CRS), can also be used with 'leaflet' when applying the simple CRS option. Map tiles can be created from an input file with any of the following extensions: tif, grd and nc for spatial maps and png, jpg and bmp for basic images. This package requires 'Python' and the 'gdal' library for 'Python'. 'Windows' users are recommended to install 'OSGeo4W' (<https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/>) as an easy way to obtain the required 'gdal' support for 'Python'.
Authors@R: c(person("Matthew", "Leonawicz", email = "mfleonawicz@alaska.edu", role = c("aut", "cre")),
person("Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning", role = c("cph", "fnd"))
)
License: MIT + file LICENSE
Encoding: UTF-8
LazyData: true
ByteCompile: true
URL: https://github.com/leonawicz/tiler
BugReports: https://github.com/leonawicz/tiler/issues
SystemRequirements: Python (>= 2.7), python-gdal library (For Windows, gdal installed via OSGeo4W <https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/> recommended)
clipboard
Suggests:
testthat,
knitr,
rmarkdown,
lintr,
covr,
jpeg,
bmp
Imports:
sp,
rgdal,
raster,
png
VignetteBuilder: knitr
RoxygenNote: 6.0.1
-
URL for the package (the development repository, not a stylized html page):
https://github.com/leonawicz/tiler -
Please indicate which category or categories from our package fit policies this package falls under *and why
geospatial, because (1) the package assists with tiling high resolution geospatial maps for practical use in online applications where displaying the source image would be too heavy a resource load and (2) even the non-geographic/"simple CRS" use case can be geospatial. For example, an image of an old, hand-drawn but historically significant map may be used as the background of a tiled map application whereas something standard like zooming in on Google Maps containing modern, current georeferenced locations would be visually incompatible and a distraction from the data shown on the map.
- Who is the target audience and what are scientific applications of this package?
R users who wish to create geographic as well as non-geographic map tiles,
(1) easily and seamlessly with only a single line of R code
(2) without a bunch of heavy package dependencies and extraneous general features and functions that do not have to do with tile generation
(3) without having to code directly in other software or interact directly with Python or make calls at the command line; staying comfortably within the familiar R environment.
(4) who may wish to create non-standard maps, which may also be followed by georeferencing locations in non-standard map space.
The typical applications would be to provide the generated tile sets to tile-based map applications such as Leaflet maps and this package brings together XYZ format, TMS format, and most especially the edge case of non-geographic format, together in a single interface.
- Are there other R packages that accomplish the same thing? If so, how does
yours differ or meet our criteria for best-in-category?
Not that I am aware of on ROpenSci. The mapview package apparently has some overlapping or related functionality just added, so I think it is only in the dev version and not the CRAN version, but looking at the source code on GitHub it appears to take a different approach, piggybacking tile creation as part of a chained or piped process that creates a Leaflet map. I wanted a package that made tiles without trying to do something specific with them "on the fly", so there is no interleaving in my package of tile creation and map creation. There is definitely value in other approaches, and perhaps in the future (not during this review process, if it gets reviewed) I may add some functionality that helps streamline processes for users such as pushing their created tile sets to GitHub for serving after they've been generated, if that gives some sense of potential future package scope. But tiler is not aimed at combining tile creation with map making. They are decidedly treated as separate endeavors.
I favor the approach and perspective of separating map tile set creation (which can be slow/bulky/resource heavy depending on the map, and can create tens of thousands of tiles, or more) from applications involving the generated tiles that I'd prefer to keep remotely hosted. tiler is suited to users who want to create tile sets, host them online, and then once that processing and scaffolding is in place and ready to be served- separately do something with those tiles as base maps. While tiler contains a simple tile previewer function, this is the "extra feature", not the core purpose or functionality. The package is intended for tile generation rather than drawing maps.
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Requirements
Confirm each of the following by checking the box. This package:
- does not violate the Terms of Service of any service it interacts with.
- has a CRAN and OSI accepted license.
- contains a README with instructions for installing the development version.
- includes documentation with examples for all functions.
- contains a vignette with examples of its essential functions and uses.
- has a test suite.
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Detail
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