feedback on possible mapserver enhancements

[thomas bonfort]

hi list,

I'd like to have some feedback from you on these possible enhancements:

On a probably "only AGG" side:

* I'd like to add a new symbology type that can be used to create
"heat maps", as seen for example at
http://terriscope.fr/ms_tmp/heat.png . the principle is to have a
semi-transparent circular gradient around a point, and when many
points fall close together the surrounding color sums up until the max
specified color. This could be specified as
SYMBOL
 NAME 'gradient'
 TYPE GRADIENT
END

and called in a POINT layer as

STYLE
 SYMBOL 'gradient'
 COLOR r g b
 OPACITY xx  #the opacity of the center of a single symbol
 SIZE xx ## at xx distance from the point center, the symbol is fully
transparent
END

* I'd like to start implementing STYLE-level transparency - there will
be a few quirks notably in line layers where the rounded caps of
consecutive linestrings won't render correctly (they overlap therefore
the final transparency is more or less twice as what was specified),
but at least that functionality can be there for polygons and point
layers

And last but not least :
* what would you think of having a wfs-t implementation for mapserver,
probably at first limited to postgis backends, and based on the
tinyows project?

comments most welcome !

thomas