MS-RFC-35 - Solving the WMS STYLES parameter issue

[Frank Warmerdam]

Kralidis,Tom [Burlington] wrote:
> I'm still soul searching with this one.  What is the driver behind this
> change?  Can we have a list of WMS client software 
> packages that are having issues with this?

Tom,

My understanding was that there was a problem with either ArcGIS or
Google Earth.  To my mind, either of those is an important enough client
to justify permissive behavior.

> As a WMS client, not supporting STYLES= is just as severe as not passing
> LAYERS, or REQUEST, etc. from a specification implementation point of
> view.  Will the time come where we are lax on those as well?

If there was no ambiguity and it was necessary to serve MapServer users,
and avoid a bad reputation for MapServer, yes.   However, I can't really
conceive of how we would know something was a WMS request with the REQUEST
parameter, nor what layers wewould draw without LAYERS set.

I don't know if FORMAT is a required keyword or not, but I can certainly
imagine picking a reasonable default format if it was not specified and
if this was necessary to improving interoperability.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org