world freemap agg/gd view

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 03:54:16PM -0500, Jeff Hoffmann wrote:
> Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> 
> >LayerSelector (on the upper right) allows you to select between agg and
> >gd. Default is GD -- the agg is certainly... brighter. And not quite the
> >look I was looking for.
> >
> 
> Is there 
> a "big picture" of what AGG will be used to do eventually (or at least 
> some ideas) or was it all pretty much to get a little bit better 
> anti-aliased output?

I have no clue what AGG was added for, but the difference between GD and
AGG is what made me switch away from MapServer 8 months ago, and as time
goes on, I find that more and more of users that I work with say "Well,
why doesn't it look as good as Google Maps?"

Without the font changes, I'm not quite back to the point where I want
to switch from Mapnik back to MapServer yet, but I don't think that
anyone can say that:

http://boston.freemap.in/kamap.html?lat=901231.7146&lon=232335.42917&zoom=8&layers=B

vs. 

http://boston.freemap.in/?lat=901231.7146&lon=232335.42917&zoom=8&layers=B

doesn't demonstrate a fairly significant difference in rendering. It was
certainly enough for me to make the switch from MapServer to Mapnik.

I'll let actual MapServer developers answer the question though, as I'm
not one.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta