MapServer 5.0 release plan

[Paul Spencer]

(third try, this time the images really are smaller!)

On 16-Mar-07, at 6:43 PM, Howard Butler wrote:
>
> My opinion is that we let AGG support hold up the 5.0 release until  
> it is workable enough to be out there in the wild.  Premium  
> cartographic output is enough of a draw (sorry) for folks coming to  
> MapServer that they will be willing to put up with its quirks to  
> get it.  I'd also like to see the dust settle on RFCs 19 and 24,  
> because IMO a major version release is the one time I think we can  
> get away with it.


Quick update on the AGG thing.  We have a shortish list of features  
to work on that should make AGG very useable by April so your  
proposed timing should give the community time to give it a pretty  
good shaking out.

The AGG antialiasing is pretty good, better than GD's I think.  What  
made a huge difference (IMO) was replacing msTransformShapeToPixel  
with something that preserved the sub-pixel accuracy of the line.   
Assefa is also looking into improving label placement with AGG to  
hopefully remove some of the 'jitter' that occurs in FOLLOW text by  
allowing for sub-pixel placement of individual glyphs (something GD  
can't do).

For those that care to see the difference, I've attached three images  
of the ubiquitous gmap roads and rail layers rendered by gd, agg with  
pixel accuracy and agg with sub-pixel accuracy.

On thick, casement style roads, the results are very nice too.   
Essentially 'google map' quality of rendering (except for the text of  
course).

At large scales, the performance is actually better than GD right now  
(although that may change?) but at smaller scales the performance  
starts to drop off.  I believe this is because of the data we are  
using and I am hopeful that generalizing the raw data for the smaller  
scales will provide a substantial improvement.

Cheers

Paul


+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Paul Spencer                          pspencer at dmsolutions.ca    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Chief Technology Officer                                         |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
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