[mapserver-dev] RFC 44

[Howard Butler]

On Apr 24, 2008, at 5:08 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote:
> Comments appreciated, in particular regarding where in the lifecycle
> this should be inserted:
>
> ========================================================
> MS RFC 44: Automatic Projection Configuration for Layers
> ========================================================

Last fall, I wrote a similar RFC:

http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/browser/trunk/mapserver/rfc/ms-rfc-37.txt

A big difference between the two proposals is that RFC 37's does not  
do automatic reprojection without the user saying they want it in the  
PROJECTION block:

PROJECTION
     TYPE NATIVE
END

In that sense, RFC 37 provides the convenience of fetching the SRS for  
you without changing MapServer's basic behavior about reprojecting  
data for layers with no PROJECTION block.  Hopefully others will  
comment, but I think changing that default behavior would be a hard  
pill for some to swallow.  If there is support to change that  
behavior, I think the RFC would need a

CONFIG "USE_OLD_LAYER_PROJECTION_RULES=TRUE"

parameter so that folks don't have to go back and edit ginormous  
mapfiles and paste in PROJECTION blocks in every LAYER to prevent  
MapServer for reprojecting things.

I would be in much stronger support of turning on automatic  
reprojection in MapServer if the equivalency testing of SRS  
definitions was foolproof enough.  /me goes to run UpdateGeometrySRID  
yet again after another failed EPSG:4326 match by OGR ...

Howard