4.6.2 release?

[Steve Lime]

MapServer doesn't just use brushes. There are a couple of ways to draw thick lines in MapServer and some are more ammenable to antialiasing than others:

  - brushes, not anti-aliasable, although I wonder because brushes in a tool like photoshop produce beautiful lines
  - offset single pixel lines (these use special style definitions in the symbol definitions and are the way MapServer 2.x draw fancier lines), can antialias but they don't scale
  - use 'width' parameter in a class style, this uses GD's built-in wide lines
  - cartolines are polygons and can be antialiased

The big problem with cartolines/polygons is keeping the width consistent at all angles and getting decent joints.

I'm sure as well that he'd ok it, but it's a fundamental question that impacts a lot of other development so might as well answer in a general sense.

Steve

>>> Paul Spencer <pspencer at DMSOLUTIONS.CA> 11/30/05 5:17 PM >>>
Guys,

I'm really worried that the way MSE uses this is fundamentally  
different from MapServer's approach of using brushes and that this  
would require more significant changes that just dropping in the new  
GD and tweaking a few things.  Specifically, I'm pretty sure they  
draw thick lines as polygons.  It might be worth contacting Bob Bray  
at Autodesk to find out specific details (unless you want to try to  
understand the code ;))

I'm pretty sure if you approached Gary about the license issue, they  
would sort it out pretty quickly if only to bolster their case with  
the community with some direct benefit to MapServer.

Cheers

Paul

On 30-Nov-05, at 6:09 PM, Steve Lime wrote:

> An addition like that would be really great. The big problem would  
> be how to handle
> GD? It would be nice to set up a function pointer myGDImageLine and  
> point it at
> a local function until the GD guys include this. However, I don't  
> know that we can
> include the ADSK code as part of MapServer due to licensing issues.  
> The other alternative
> would be to distribute a bastardized version of GD for awhile until  
> the merge happens.
> In that case I'd love to see outline optimization work Julien did  
> included too.
>
> Steve
>
>>>> Daniel Morissette <dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca> 11/30/05 4:50 PM >>>
> Steve Lime wrote:
>> There are a lot of things going on that could affect the 4.8  
>> release, including folks
>> spending time on other topics. I could see it being delayed just a  
>> bit and would hate
>> to see the website delayed too. Just a thought...
>>
>
> Talking of things that could possibly delay the release a bit,  
> should we
> start talking about the possibility of backporting ADSK's antialiasing
> patch to GD into MapServer (for those reading this for the first time,
> that would give us thick antialiased lines).
>
> Assefa told me that he built the patched GD and it works with  
> MapServer,
> but he has not found yet how to enable the thick lines antialiasing.
>
> Once we know more, we may have to make a proposal to the TSC about
> possibly breaking our own release rules to include this in 4.8,  
> possibly
> extending the release date a bit, but the changes would hopefully be
> very minor and not have much impact. We should get on that soon.
>
> What do you all think?
>
> Daniel
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>   Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca 
>   DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>

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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/| 
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