Call for comments -RFC 39

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Yewondwossen Assefa wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>  I have put together an RFC outlining changes that could be done to be 
> able to support Named styles in WMS/SLD. I would appreciate your 
> comments on it:
> 
>   http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/development/rfc/ms-rfc-39
> 
> Thanks
> 

Assefa,

Thank you for a well written RFC. I have a couple of questions/comments.

When I think of "NamedStyles", I think of a section of the mapfile that 
just has a bunch of STYLE blocks, that can be reused anywhere by 
referencing there names. This make the STYLE object reusable via the 
name reference. Also redefining a STYLE only needs to be done in one 
place not N places, which greatly simplifies the mapfile maintenance.

The advantage of this is that it modularizes the mapfile and compresses 
it greatly. It would be great to define a 13/11 red/white casement road 
STYLE and then reference it multiple times in my mapfile via its name 
for example.

Your proposal instead moves us in the opposite direction of adding more 
text tags to the layers and making them more verbose and less 
comprehensible.

Was thought given to anything similar to my description about? What 
other implementations were considered and rejected? Why? if any.

Would the above idea be compatible with WMS/SLD issues you are trying to 
solve or could it be adapted to this problem?

What are the levels of effort of these two implementations?

Thanks,
   -Steve W