Rename adaptive globe to globe-to-mercator

[birkskyum]

Important

this was reverted in

• Revert "Rename adaptive globe to globe-to-mercator (#878)" #889

Rename of the adaptive globe from globe to globe-to-mercator as was suggested here:

Birk: it would be great to have the projection API extend well to: maplibre/maplibre-gl-js#168

Harel: Maybe we can name it globe-mercator to indicate both are used, IDK.

Jakub: I think globe-mercator is a good name.

There are many good reasons for leaving globe open to a globe-only projection (no mercator transition), and to be more explicit about what globe-to-mercator does. Doing an early rename of the adaptive projection will minimize the impact on plugin authors that are now starting to use our adaptive globe projection:

• Adding projection control and map instance logic maptiler/maptiler-sdk-js#132)

Launch Checklist

• Confirm your changes do not include backports from Mapbox projects (unless with compliant license) - if you are not sure about this, please ask!

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

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[HarelM]

When looking at this PR I can't help but think about making the value an interpulatable with expression. This way you have full control over the transition and can develop other layers (custom mainly) knowing exactly when things change instead of making assumptions.
This can lead in the future to allow transition from any protection to any protection based on zoom level (or maybe other stuff, IDK).
Let me know what you think.
Cc: @Pessimistress, @ibesora @louwers

[birkskyum]

It's an interesting idea. I think we're better off hardcoding the useful options for the time being, and then later on re-asses if we can generalize something.

[HarelM]

Let's continue the discussion in the relevant issue.

[birkskyum]

That's a good idea. This PR just adds a setting to be able to use the already-implemented globe projection non-adaptively, comparable to the mercator.

[birkskyum]

@HarelM , I've reduced this to just the rename of the adaptive globe from globe to globe-mercator like you suggested.

[louwers]

I think globe-mercator if pretty confusing. 🫠

Also, now that I think of it, is a globe even a projection? I mean, it is in the mathematical sense, but a 'map projection' is commonly a projection of a globe on a plane, not the other way around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection

We should maybe bring some GIS experts into the discussion? Edit: I called in the troops, maybe we get a good response. :) https://elk.zone/floss.social/@bart/113424884295371526

[birkskyum]

@louwers the globe is a Spherical projection.

We need space for a non-adaptive globe for a projection that doesn't transition to mercator, to support:

• Custom layers based on spherical logic, that doesn't map well to the mercator.
• Possible to accurately align overlays that doesn't yet support the transition to mercator, such like deckgl.
• Allow for zooming into the poles, which isn't possible in a which isn't possible in Web Mercator, since it's a transverse mercator projection with the cylinder going though the poles.
• Avoid issues of projection transitioning. When on the Globe with Terrain3D, there's a lot of issues with the transition to mercator.
  • Runtime Performance. As an example, the projections use different tile loading algorithms, causing extra tile loading / rendering.
  • Bundle size.
    • Each projection is very heavy. The adaption-logic + globe made the production bundle go from 800 to 877 kb ( 9.6% increase ⚠️ ), which bring a need for custom builds with single projections. Lacking bundle-splitting will cause adoption problems for projects that are mercator-only (like bing) and globe-only (like weather services). It's only possible to bundle-split if the projection can run standalone.
    • I've been investigating ESM / tree shaking for years now, but since the projection can change at runtime (because it's in the style), instead of being a e.g. a Class that's imported before compilation, I don't think we can tree shake this. If we have more projections down the line, we might want to consider lazy loading them as an alternative, or having them in dedicated npm packages, but that's, like expressions, possible to look into later on.
  • Different handling of sky/atmosphere/horizon.
  • The noticeable wrapping animation
    • On high zoom the horizon curvature is removed, and the horizon is much much closer, which looks odd.
    • On low zoom the whole globe is wrapped/unwrapped if you zoom out fast enough).
• Feature parity with other projects that support this - like ol-cesium

[louwers]

Maybe globe-to-mercator would be a bit more descriptive?

Wr.t. to @HarelM's comment about expressions. At a later stage we can take an object for this property that you can use to configure where transitions occur. We would keep the string version for backward compatibility and so people can easily pick a sensible default without having to supply a complicated object-based configuration if they don't need it.

[pka]

globe-to-mercator sounds good to me. I've made a prototype switching from Equal Earth projection to Web Mercator, so it could even make sense to declare more than one projection. But transitioning from a globe to a flat map is special enough to justify a dedicated combined projection name.

[birkskyum]

@pka Equal Earth support sounds great! Looking forward to see it.

[birkskyum]

Breaking experimental / under-development properties, is that technically a SemVer patch?

[HarelM]

If someone is counting on this version to change when there are breaking changes then yes.
Since I don't think a lot of people care about the version of the style-spec I would advise to change the major version of it to keep semver standard.
I must say I still don't think this is a good approach to the style spec - mainly because if we think of the projection as an equivalent to a color name, then you don't have blue-to-black colors when you want to change the color based on zoom level, you have blue, black and an expression if you want to do "transitioning" colors...
Anyway... I guess I'm in the minority here...

[louwers]

@HarelM On the other hand, if 99% of the people where happy with blue-to-black and didn't want to customize it further, it would make sense to have a shorthand for it.