Status of AGG support?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Paul, Steve, et al,

I have mapserver trunk built with AGG but have little clue on how to use 
it at this point. Googling shows up two trac tickets #2114 and #2115 
which show:

OUTPUTFORMAT
     NAME "agg/png24"
     MIMETYPE "image/png; mode=24bit"
     DRIVER "AGG/PNG"
     EXTENSION "png"
     IMAGEMODE "RGB"
     FORMATOPTION "PALETTE_FORCE=TRUE"
     FORMATOPTION "PALETTE=/my/path/palette.txt"
END

So this looks like the deal. What is palette.txt and does one define 
that. I assume this controls the problem with tiles shifting colors 
because the color palette overflows based on the anti-aliasing using up 
the color slots. Is this then a list of the primary colors that you want 
pre-allocated in you image so they do not shift.

What is the format of the file?

Thanks,
   -Steve

Paul Spencer wrote:
> The other thing that I am very keen to have is text rendered/placed 
> using AGG.  Not sure if it will be done for 5.0 though.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 3-Jul-07, at 1:25 PM, Steve Lime wrote:
> 
>> Hi Tom: AGG support is in the codebase for 5.0. I still owe an RFC to 
>> explain what was
>> done although the addition of AGG doesn't affect any other portions of 
>> MapServer. It's
>> a big user feature though. I recently got a big time sink off my plate 
>> and will work that up
>> ASAP.
>>
>> The support is relatively complete. The guys from DM Solutions can 
>> probably comment
>> further as they've been using it the most. The AGG vs. GD images DM 
>> has supplied are
>> very nice. The quality difference is noticeable with roads in particular.
>>
>> The only missing capability that I am aware of has to do with PIXMAP 
>> symbols that contain
>> an alpha channel. There is a fundamental difference in how AGG and GD 
>> handle alpha
>> blending (GD is flat out backwards).  We use GD to manage the pixel 
>> buffer that AGG is
>> rendering into so that becomes a problem. I'll go into options in the 
>> RFC.
>>
>> Anyway, other than that the support seems to be working nicely is 
>> worth trying.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>>>> On 7/1/2007 at 10:08 PM, in message
>> <7b5b710d0707012008i59c41e8bq8e0ef4d8022f40f8 at mail.gmail.com>, Tom Beard
>> <tom at PROJECTX.CO.NZ> wrote:
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> This is my first time posting here, and I hope this is the right 
>>> forum to
>>> ask this question.
>>>
>>> I was wondering what the status of AGG support was for the 5.0 
>>> release. On
>>> searching the archives, the most recent reference I could find was the
>>> minutes from the May 22 IRC meeting that said that there would be an RFC
>>> freeze on June 15, and that an RFC for AGG was "forthcoming". Did AGG
>>> support make it into that freeze? Is it listed somewhere online?
>>>
>>> I'd also be interested to know if there is a version currently in 
>>> Subversion
>>> that includes AGG sub-pixel rendering and that works well enough to 
>>> have a
>>> go at compiling on Windows.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>             Tom Beard
> 
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Paul Spencer                          pspencer at dmsolutions.ca    |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+