Call for comments -RFC 39

[Steve Lime]

My Appologies, I haven't been watching mapserver-dev closely for the last couple
of days. I gotta kill the auto filing for mapserver-dev and mapserver-users...

After reading Daniel's most recent comments I guess I kinda like the theme idea
too. That said, it's a good more disruptive than the group idea, at least for mapfile
parsing and mapscript access. I think the theme idea would be easier to implement
for the drawing and query code, just reference the right theme and proceed like
now. Which to pick...

For mapfile parsing we could handle themes the way we handled moving things
like COLORs from a classObj to a styleObj. The parser still recognizes COLOR at
the class level but actually stuffs that value into style[0]. So, if a CLASS were
encountered at the layerObj level you'd in essence be populating theme[0] in
the layerObj. So, you could maintain mapfile backwards compatibility. There would
always be at least one theme.

The bigger problem would be MapScript I think. I wonder if all the layer methods
for accessing classes would fall apart. Perhaps not if the theme index were optional
and defaulted to 0 so code like $layer->getClass(0); could possibly still work.

All the copying code etc... would need to be fixed to deal with one more level of
hierarchy. 

So, the theme idea touches a lot more code but feels like less of a kludge. Is there
enough funding to pursue that extra work? 

Also, depending on how backwards compatibility with mapfiles (I'm sure that can be 
made to work) and mapscript is an issue I'm not sure this feels like a 5.2 modification, 
more like a 6.0. If compatible, 5.2, if compatibility is broken, then 6.0.

Steve

>>> Yewondwossen Assefa <yassefa at dmsolutions.ca> 11/26/07 4:40 PM >>>
Steve,

  If you have a chance, can you comment on this. I would like to have 
your inputs before either going forward with a vote or retract the RFC.

Thanks

Steve Lime wrote:
> I need to take a look at this and compare notes with the discussion we had a bit ago. I'll
> try to do that in the next few days.
> 
> Steve
> 
>>>> On 11/20/2007 at 2:53 PM, in message <4743495D.6000903 at dmsolutions.ca>,
> Yewondwossen Assefa <yassefa at DMSOLUTIONS.CA> wrote:
>> Frank, all
>>
>>> I believe I had misunderstood.  So the classgroup declaration just defines
>>> which style group will be used by default if it is not overridden using
>>> STYLE= or another override mechanism?  This makes sense, but perhaps need
>>> to be made as clear as possible in eventual documentation.
>>>
>>   I have added a note in the RFC to clarify a bit more the use of 
>> CLASSGROUP.
>>
>>
>> I would like to push for more comments or a vote on this.
>>
>> Thanks
> 
> 


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Assefa Yewondwossen
Software Analyst

Email: assefa at dmsolutions.ca
http://www.dmsolutions.ca/

Phone: (613) 565-5056 (ext 14)
Fax:   (613) 565-0925
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