<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hi Dan (and others),</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">So many things to consider, but to stay focused I would say: </div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">  Keep it simple, and stick to what we're good at: integrating best of class packages (such as mapserver, GeoServer, and OpenLayers).</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I would look for a good mapserver mapfile editor (or style creator) project and integrate that into our workflows.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a data-fr-linked="true" href="https://github.com/MapServer/MapServer/wiki/MapFile-Editors" id="isPasted" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/MapServer/MapServer/wiki/MapFile-Editors</a></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">As for vector styling (especially via GM's mapbook), do we have any users interested in doing that?  If we do, something like GeoStyler might be the answer.  Our involvement could be as simple as adding How-to (or even just a link) to our doc.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">A couple of years ago I started writing a GeoMoose Implementation Roadmap to help new users create a working site with their data.  It was scary how much text file editing you had to do on the server (and you better get the syntax right).</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Best Regards,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Brent</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div contenteditable="false" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><hr id="previousmessagehr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; user-select: none;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">From</strong>: "Dan Little via geomoose-psc" <geomoose-psc@lists.osgeo.org><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Sent</strong>: 12/14/23 9:25 AM<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">To</strong>: GeoMOOSE PSC <geomoose-psc@lists.osgeo.org><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Subject</strong>: [geomoose-psc] When Open Specs Close<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div dir="ltr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- <a href="https://github.com/openlayers/ol-mapbox-style/pull/940#issuecomment-1855415159" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/openlayers/ol-mapbox-style/pull/940#issuecomment-1855415159</a></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">We use a "vendored" version of the ol-mapbox-style-spec to power GeoMoose's styling right now. This may have an effect on us over the next few months that motivate moving some of the styling engine over to something like GeoStyler's. </div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">This does force me to shine light on a few GeoMoose things that I've been struggling with in the last two years:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">1. How can we keep being the "plug-in-data-and-go" solution? How do we become the best at that? MapServer can feel very difficult to work with despite its performance. I think MapServer 8 is a great piece of software and I understand many of the design decisions but if I've grown up on E**I stuff, at this point, it'll be difficult to approach.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">2. How can we get better at vector styling? This may be Ahab's Whale but is definitely something I think about. Styling in the app, styling data, how do we serve data that is easy to style? Etc. etc.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Things I know we can't make a part of our standard install and expect easy uptake:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- Cloud</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- Docker</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- "Compile."</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">There are solutions I would love to think about but have left off the table:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- Create a mapfile editor. It's been tried but with narrow constraints it might work.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- Jump to QGIS server and/or piggy back on it to allow publishing whole apps. Keeping up with these changes are likely a full time job.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- "F**k it, we're the mapserver now!" Collaborate with or upon a solution written in rust or go that support cross platform compilation. Double click a binary, it starts the server, go through the wizard to tell it where some data is, and you're off to the races. Want it as a service? Sure here's the 10-step guide to making it work with pm2 or on Debian.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Thank you for taking the space for this. 😆 I genuinely want us to have a product that people can use, use easily, and provide some real benefit to the ecosystem in ways other projects aren't. I love that this team has always focused on what it takes to do GIS in the trenches and what that user profile looks like.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div></div>