I am so pissed off right now, and this is why:



MOTHER OF PEARL! LINE THE HELL UP!!!

This is a mapping application that we are customizing for a client. They have a format of data called RPF that ESRI MapObjects is particularly bad at cacheing. However, we found an open source project called OpenMap that handles RPF data very well. So it should be a whiz-bang process to create a custom MobObjects layer (the MapObjects API supports this) that uses the OpenMap code to spit out images. Making a small application that did nothing but spit out images given a path to RPF data and the extents of the image was nothing, simple task. Writing custom MapObjects layers is also not a big deal, we do it all the time.l

EXCEPT OPENMAP DOESN'T DEFINE MAP EXTENTS IN ANY SANE MANNER!!!!

Typically, a map extent is defined as the min/max latitude and longitude. OpenMap on the other hand expects a center latitude and longitude, along with a map scale. Fine, whatever, except it completely ignores any concept of aspect ratio! But let's ignore that, let's just calculate the damn scale... wait, you CAN'T because a monitor's pixel-per-inch ratio is not fixed!

So, after much trial and error, I've come up with something that is a reasonable scale factor... I think. Panning the map left-right is good, panning it up-down is okay, but if you pan it diagonally you get this freaking fracturing of the image.

GHAKGHAKALHGAH!!!!!!!