feedback on possible mapserver enhancements

[Steve Lime]

>>> On 1/30/2008 at 1:37 PM, in message
<d2b988930801301137w232f4a29u24200f2badf795f at mail.gmail.com>, thomas bonfort
<thomas.bonfort at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> hi list,
> 
> I'd like to have some feedback from you on these possible enhancements:
> 
> On a probably "only AGG" side:
> 
> * I'd like to add a new symbology type that can be used to create
> "heat maps", as seen for example at
> http://terriscope.fr/ms_tmp/heat.png . the principle is to have a
> semi-transparent circular gradient around a point, and when many
> points fall close together the surrounding color sums up until the max
> specified color. This could be specified as
> SYMBOL
>  NAME 'gradient'
>  TYPE GRADIENT
> END
> 
> and called in a POINT layer as
> 
> STYLE
>  SYMBOL 'gradient'
>  COLOR r g b
>  OPACITY xx  #the opacity of the center of a single symbol
>  SIZE xx ## at xx distance from the point center, the symbol is fully
> transparent
> END

There was/is a gradient capability already. Any chance of resurrecting and fixing that 
to achieve your variable opacity objective but also color transitions (red => blue)?

> * I'd like to start implementing STYLE-level transparency - there will
> be a few quirks notably in line layers where the rounded caps of
> consecutive linestrings won't render correctly (they overlap therefore
> the final transparency is more or less twice as what was specified),
> but at least that functionality can be there for polygons and point
> layers

I'd support this. We'd still have layer level transparency anyway. Is there no way that
this could also be applied in the GD environment at least on a limited basis?

Are you thinking RGBA colors or an opacity keyword at the style level?

> And last but not least :
> * what would you think of having a wfs-t implementation for mapserver,
> probably at first limited to postgis backends, and based on the
> tinyows project?

A year ago I would have said no, but several times in recent months I've had questions
from folks that seem to use WFS-T as a means of selecting their web rendering tool. It's 
becoming a differentiating feature. I'm not familiar with TinyOWS though. Are you 
suggesting assimilating TinyOWS? 

> comments most welcome !
> 
> thomas

Steve