[mapserver-users] Announcing the new MS4W

Sat Sep 26 01:04:45 PDT 2015

Hi,

The add-ons are great work. However, my point is that without doing any additional installations the best that a new Mapserver user can achieve is "No query information to decode. QUERY_STRING is set, but empty." while everybody who has installed Geoserver can read WMS GetCapabilities from http://localhost :8080 and either add the service to any WMS or play with the demo viewer:
http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/topp/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetMap&layers=topp:states&styles=&bbox=-124.73142200000001,24.955967,-66.969849,49.371735&width=780&height=330&srs=EPSG:4326&format=application/openlayers

I still think that the best marketing we could do for Mapserver would be to offer an immediate out-of-box experience for Mapserver users on any platform "Hey, it makes maps! "

-Jukka Rahkonen-

Jeff McKenna wrote:

>  Hi Jukka,

> Speaking of that, I spent a considerable amount of time for this release setting up the MS4W add-ons for this version (MapServer 7).  Actually this does handle the needs you mention.  Such as OGC: well there is an MS4W add-on named "MapServer OGC Workshop" that contains so many links to services and working mapfiles (all working for MapServer 7).  Need full applications working with MapServer 7? : well there is GeoMOOSE (latest release) or Mapbender (latest release), all ready for you to use with MS4W.  Looking for the original (as in Steve Lime's CGI demo), it works now with MapServer 7 even, as an MS4W add-on, named "MapServer Itasca Demo Application". :)

In total there is over 500 MB of working mapfiles, data, applications ready to get you going.

Give them a try: http://www.ms4w.com/download.html

See you on the new MS4W list.

-jeff

--
Jeff McKenna
MapServer Consulting and Training Services http://www.gatewaygeomatics.com/

On 2015-09-23 11:39 AM, Rahkonen Jukka (MML) wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> That will be great. I am sure that Mapserver has frightened away thousands of new users because it is so difficult to make the very first map.  Just compare it with Geoserver that comes with the data_dir and fine collection of readymade demo services and layers. It is not so easy to make Mapserver demos which would work out-of-the box on both Windows and Linux, but making it to work in MS4W will be a good start.
>
> -Jukka-
>
>
>
> -----Alkuperäinen viesti-----
> Lähettäjä: Jeff McKenna [mailto:jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com]
> Lähetetty: 23. syyskuuta 2015 4:18
> Vastaanottaja: Rahkonen Jukka (MML)
> Aihe: Re: [mapserver-users] Announcing the new MS4W
>
> Hi Jukka,
>
> Great idea, actually I have something ready from a workshop that can 
> be used.  Will add it with the upcoming GDAL 2.0.1
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
> On 2015-09-22 10:40 AM, Rahkonen Jukka (MML) wrote:
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> I believe that MapServer should offer an immediate "It works" experience for new users. Could you consider to include some demo data and mapfiles into the standard delivery of MS4W? They could be placed for example into \apps\demo.  Once they are there we could have WMS GetMap links with &FORMAT=image/png and &FORMAT=application/openlayers on a visible place of the html page that opens from http://localhost.  Or the OpenLayers map could even be included on the start page by default.
>>
>> If you think it is a good idea I can make some first few mapfiles on top of Natural Earth countries. It seems to mean about 5 MB extra as zipped but I do believe that it would be worth it.  I could start with these:
>>
>> - Hello world WMS - simple but still complete with enough WMS metadata, and naturally debug and ms_errorfile.
>> - WMS with some styling
>> - WMS with labels
>> - WMS with GetFeatureInfo
>> - WFS
>>
>> I could also write a short document about how to get the first map with shp2img, browser, and with a few GIS program.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> -Jukka Rahkonen-
>>
>>
>> Jeff McKenna wrote: Announcing the new MS4W
>>
>>> Hi everyone!
>>
>>> Just in time for FOSS4G-Seoul, I'm very proud to announce the new MS4W[1]  MS4W is thriving, as you can see by its long history[2] of releases, and the last few months has seen a lot of development.  Much thanks goes to Tanya Haddad for her support for this release, it has been quite an effort updating the full stack (the number of libraries updated and added is large as you see in the recent history).
>>
>>> You'll also note that there has been releases happening, we just needed a new home for people to find them.  It's quite exciting to live at ms4w.com now, and you'll also notice that we have been using a new tracker[3] which has been working well (please feel free to use it).
>>
>> You may also notice that releases now have a Roadmap[4], every 3 months with dated milestones, and you can follow along the exact changes coming through the tracker link on that page.
>>
>> This 3.1.0 release has some tasty features, including optimized 
>> Apache 2.4, MapServer 7.0, PHP 5.4.45, all mapscripts, Oracle 
>> support, MapCache
>> 1.4.0 (with GDAL support), TinyOWS 1.1.1, spatialite/OSM utilities, and many many more goodies.  New users might like to start at the features[5] page to review.
>>
>> Finally we have moved to a new mailing list (I haven't been able to 
>> post to my own old MS4W mailing list for almost 2 years now): please 
>> join, as all releases will be announced and support given through the 
>> new MS4W list[6] So, I'll cya there! :)
>>
>> Thanks so much everyone, I am quite excited.
>>
>> [1] http://www.ms4w.com/
>> [2] http://www.ms4w.com/HISTORY.html
>> [3] http://www.ms4w.com/trac/
>> [4] http://www.ms4w.com/roadmap.html
>> [5] http://www.ms4w.com/features.html [6] 
>> http://lists.ms4w.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ms4w-users
>>
>> -jeff
>>
>>
>

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