[Mapserver-dev] Re: 3.7 and native image rendering support

[Sean Gillies]

On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 03:01  PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> Steve Lime wrote:
>> Frank: What would you think about loosing all native raster support 
>> in favor
>> of OGR? The only obstacle I see is the EPPL7 support but perhaps that 
>> could
>> be added to OGR. It's a pretty straight forward format I think. I'm 
>> just
>> thinking that simplifying the configuration options, not to mention 
>> the code
>> maintenance, is a good idea at this point.
>
> Steve,
>
> I think this makes sense from a maintenance point of view, but I am 
> concerned
> that it makes it impossible to built a light version of mapserver with
> raster input support.
>
> I am thinking we should move the EPPL7 format into GDAL and then blow 
> away
> all format support except for PNG and GIF done using GD (pseudocolored 
> only),
> with world files.  Furthermore I think we should only use these 
> drivers if
> GDAL is not enabled, and we would need to better clarify the 
> limitations
> of the non-GDAL drivers.
>
> In particular, I would like to get rid of the existing TIFF driver 
> which
> has some significant flaws, and often gets used instead of GDAL.
>
> I have cc:ed this to the developers list to see if anyone else has an
> opinion on the importance of a "light" option for MapServer.
>
> Best regards,
>
Frank,

I think that the "light" option should also support JPEG through GD
so that users have an option for serving a large volume of compressed
RGB imagery.  Am with you on the TIFF driver.

Sean

--
Sean Gillies
sgillies at frii.com
http://www.frii.com/~sgillies