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<TITLE>Re: GeoServer superseeding MapServer in Europe?</TITLE>
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<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Hello,</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">As a</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">comparatively</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> new user to Mapserver I just thoug</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">ht I would put in my two cents</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I think the main reasons why one would chose one product over another is due to performance, features, and ease of use.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri"> </FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">For most applications the performance between Mapserver and Geo</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">S</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">erver appears comparable. Second,</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">GeoServer has some</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">interesting</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> features, however both Mapserver and Geoserver ha</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">s a decent feature set. This leaves us at ease of use</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">…</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">When I first tried out Mapserver a few years ago I</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">searched for documentation for installing Mapserver</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">, which l</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">ead me to</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">“</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">compiling</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> on Win32.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">”</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> Needless to say I quickly became</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">frustrated</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> and lost trying to</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">find all the correct dependencies on different websites. I soon decided that</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> it was simply too much work bother with and gave up.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> Later on I had found the MS4W project, which to any new user is very easy to</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">use as they only have to click apache-start.bat to get mapserver up and running.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Next, I</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">think any new user is</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">interested</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> in finding an all inclusive</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">application</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">that helps them</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">build a mapping site, t</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">hat way</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">users</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> can take the example application and plug in their own data. </FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">Mapserver has excellent documentation and examples for the Mapfile itself</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">, however</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">besides the one simple map on the main page there are no examples of applications</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">. </FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">I think the MS4W website does a</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">better</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> job at distributing applications such as GeoMoose, and PMapper</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">that people can download, plug in their own data and then publish the site to the web</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">. Perhaps p</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">eople might be more intrested in using mapserver if there was a</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">“</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Gallary</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">”</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> that allowed new potential users the ability to see what Mapserver can really do.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">To</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">summarize</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> here are some things that I th</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">ink would attract new users</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">:</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">-Make the link to MS4W</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> or FGS</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> more</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">prevalent</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">-</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Add a</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">Gallery that links to</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">“</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Easy to set up applications</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">”</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> such as GeoMoose, PMapper</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">-If possible include some of the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">dependencies</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> for compiling mapserver on</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">the</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> website so people do not need to sift around several websites.</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Mark Volz</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">GIS Specialist</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Lyon County, MN</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Message: 1</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:58:16 -0400</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">From: Daniel Morissette <dmorissette@mapgears.com></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Subject: [mapserver-dev] GeoServer superseeding MapServer in Europe?</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">To: 'MapServer Dev List' <mapserver-dev@lists.osgeo.org></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Message-ID: <4C34C038.9050204@mapgears.com></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Hi Bart,</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">I saw that you tweeted the following this morning:</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">"bartvdeijnden: #Geoserver is superseding #Mapserver at least here in Europe and I am starting to switch mentally as well (as an early adopter of Mapserver)"</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Would you care to please elaborate on the reasons you see for this, and perhaps guide us on what we can do to help this situation?</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">I can't imagine that the slower pace of new developments and releases of the last year or two is the only reason for that (or is it?). Your feedback and thoughts would be much welcome.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Daniel</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">--</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Consolas">Daniel Morissette</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><A HREF="http://www.mapgears.com/"><SPAN LANG="en-us"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Consolas">http://www.mapgears.com/</FONT></U></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"></SPAN></P>
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