A question of scale

[Frans Knibbe]

Hello,

Currently I am setting minimum and maximum scales for layers and classes 
in the map file. This works leads me to the question how scale is 
defined in mapserver. I could not find it in the documentation. Does 
anyone know what is meant by scale in the context of the MINSCALE and 
MAXSCALE keywords?

And wouldn't it be better to use scalehints (as defined by the OGC) in 
stead of scale? That would also make the settings less confusing because 
MINSCALE is used for maximum scale and vice versa.

Regards,

Frans