SVG can be drawn on map in much more faster way than traditional approaches, at least for points. Traditional approach re-position each element to fit into the view of the map, however SVG is “scalable” so we can use it and it performs much more faster for zoom-in/out.
Few considerations:
- SVG itself define viewport by its coordinate space, all outside of this viewport is usually clipped, so it is important to keep SVG viewport in-line with the viewport of the map. There are approaches that resizes SVG as you zoom-in (here), and while it works, it has a problems in deep-zooms when you need to move on map (actually you move giant SVG based on the zoom )
- translating LatLon to absolute pixel values (like here used for WebGL) is possible solution, however IE and FF has problems with large numbers for transoform (>1 M), So we need to get SVG elements in view coordinates and translate them.
- Having some track of bounding box of all elements like again used here should be avoided (SVG or its group element knows about extension of the elements it holds)
- So while we keep SVG in the viewport, we need to compensate any shift and zoom by translating <g> (group) of all elements.
- So in leaflet when map moves, SVG is translated back to its original position while <g> is translated forward to reflect the map movement
- We need to keep track of LatLon position of either map center or one of the corner – we use topLeft corner.
- Leaflet doesn’t do precise enlargement and rounds view points because of some CSS troubles on some devices (noted here). We need to patch two translating functions in Leaflet to get this right (so SVG enlargement will be aligned with map)… but I need to look on this again, best would be to not patch Leaflet of course.
most important things happen in moveEnd event:
var bounds = this._map.getBounds(); // -- latLng bounds of map viewport var topLeftLatLng = new L.LatLng(bounds.getNorth(), bounds.getWest()); // -- topLeft corner of the viewport var topLeftLayerPoint = this._map.latLngToLayerPoint(topLeftLatLng); // -- translating to view coord var lastLeftLayerPoint = this._map.latLngToLayerPoint(this._lastTopLeftlatLng); var zoom = this._map.getZoom(); var scaleDelta = this._map.getZoomScale(zoom, this._lastZoom); // -- amount of scale from previous state e.g. 0.5 or 2 var scaleDiff = this.getScaleDiff(zoom); // -- diff of how far we are from initial scale this._lastZoom = zoom; // -- we need to keep track of last zoom var delta = lastLeftLayerPoint.subtract(topLeftLayerPoint); // -- get incremental delta in view coord this._lastTopLeftlatLng = topLeftLatLng; // -- we need to keep track of last top left corner, with this we do not need to track center of enlargement L.DomUtil.setPosition(this._svg, topLeftLayerPoint); // -- reset svg to keep it inside map viewport this._shift._multiplyBy(scaleDelta)._add(delta); // -- compute new relative shift from initial position // -- set group element to compensate for svg translation, and scale</pre> this._g.setAttribute("transform", "translate(" + this._shift.x + "," + this._shift.y + ") scale(" + scaleDiff + ")");
Test page / Gist : http://bl.ocks.org/Sumbera/7e8e57368175a1433791
To better illustrate movement of SVG inside the map, here is a small diagram of basic SVG states: