Today Gluon announces a new product with immediate availability: the Gluon Maps component. A couple of years ago, Gluon co-founder Johan Vos started the OpenMapFX project, which provides basic geo-map functionality and allows for multiple layers to be added on top of the map. Over time Johan and Gluon received a number of questions related to OpenMapFX, both from open source developers as well as from companies. Gluon Maps is our attempt to revitalise and reimagine a mapping component for JavaFX, suitable for cross-platform and cross-device use.
Gluon Maps is a total refactoring of OpenMapFX, and it makes the licensing model clear: the code is freely available in the gluon-oss bitbucket repo, where it is licensed under the GPL license. This allows open-source developers to use, modify, package and distribute it. For commercial software, we have the option to buy commercial licenses as well, and we provide commercial support.
We are still adding functionality that used to be available in OpenMapFX to Gluon Maps, paying attention to a number of requirements:
- Performance: we already improved the rendering algorithm and it maximally benefits from the JavaFX rendering system.
- Mobile-friendly: Gluon Maps can be used on mobile devices, and it is designed to be highly performant.
- Consistent API: JavaFX developers should find the API very consistent with the other JavaFX API’s.
There are many things in the pipeline that will be added to Gluon Maps, including:
- Currently, Gluon Maps uses the Open StreetMap tiles to render map tiles. We are adding functionality that makes it possible to map other tile providers as well.
- Ee are improving the caching mechanisms, and use a different caching strategy on different platforms.
- We will also integrate the maps with location functionality, in case the device running the map software contains a GPS or another location device.
As Gluon Maps is an open source project, we welcome external contributions. In case you want to contribute to this project, complete the Gluon Contributor License Agreement and let us know what you want to work on.