I'm in the process of resurrecting an app called MacSPOC (SPOC = Spacecraft Personal Orbit Computations) that was among the first to fly in orbit aboard the Space Shuttle on a Mac Portable laptop during mission STS-41 in October 1990. Using Swift and Map Kit, this rewitten app heavily depends on being able to display a 2D (flat) map of Earth's entire surface on which orbital ground track points will be plotted. I can specify a global span for this map with the following statement, and it compiles cleanly.
let globalSpan = MKCoordinateSpan(latitudeDelta: 180.0, longitudeDelta: 360.0)
Unfortunately, a map with global scale is not displayed at run time. Furthermore, using the map's "zoom-out" control hits a hard limit at continent-sized scale, well short of global. Window resizing on a 27" iMac display doesn't achieve a larger scale than the zoom-out control's limit either. Scrolling does eventually display Earth's entire surface, but not at one time
From other Map Kit discussions I've read, the zoom-out control's behavior appears to be a framework limitation. If so, would Apple consider removing that limitation? What I have in mind is zoom-out behavior that's only limited by the view's horizontal dimension exceeding the specified longitude span or the vertical dimension exceeding the specified latitude span. In general, nearing such a zoom-out limit would result in a horizontal or vertical gray bar in the view, but that's acceptable. View resizing could be used to eliminate such artifacts.
If I'm mistaken and there's no Map Kit obstacle to displaying Earth's entire surface on a 2D map, I'd be grateful to know about a practical workaround in Swift. In that case, thanks in advance!
