pixmap symbols from mapscript ?

[Attila Csipa]

I'm having difficulties using pixmap symbol from mapscript (current CVS
version), I wonder if someone had experience with a similar problem ?

I wanted to have rotated pixmap (bitmap) symbols on my map, however AFAIK
mapserver does not support rotated symbols. I thought I could make prerotated
bitmaps which I would put in symbolset and use classes to show the proper
symbol. However, this needed the increase of the MS_MAXSYMBOLS define (I
tried with 1000) after which mapserver would hang indefinitely if the
symbolset itself contained somewhere over 300 symbols (I also tried playing
with MS_MAXSTYLES and MS_MAXCLASSES in map.h to no avail). Alternatively I
wanted to generate the symbols dynamically from mapscript, however looking at
the docs I see no reference to the possibility of creating bitmap symbols
(even though the MS_SYMBOL_PIXMAP constant does exist). As a last resort I
tried to generate a temporary symbolset file which contained only the needed
symbols for a certain map extent and load it with $map->setsymbolset(), but
regardless of the number of symbols it contained, it hang, but ONLY if the
symbols defined inside were of PIXMAP type. I did not managed to dig up
anything relevant in the list archives. Any ideas ?