feedback on possible mapserver enhancements

[thomas bonfort]

On Jan 30, 2008 9:27 PM, Steve Lime <Steve.Lime at dnr.state.mn.us> wrote:
>
>
> >>> On 1/30/2008 at 1:37 PM, in message
> <d2b988930801301137w232f4a29u24200f2badf795f at mail.gmail.com>, thomas bonfort
> <thomas.bonfort at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> > 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
>
> There was/is a gradient capability already. Any chance of resurrecting and fixing that
> to achieve your variable opacity objective but also color transitions (red => blue)?

are you referring to the colorrange item with mincolor/maxcolor? If so
I looked into that, but we're missing the keywords to specify the
opacity.

>
> > * 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
>
> I'd support this. We'd still have layer level transparency anyway. Is there no way that
> this could also be applied in the GD environment at least on a limited basis?
>
> Are you thinking RGBA colors or an opacity keyword at the style level?

I was thinking opacity at the style level. I'll have a look at what
could be done on the gd side.

>
> > 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?
>
> A year ago I would have said no, but several times in recent months I've had questions
> from folks that seem to use WFS-T as a means of selecting their web rendering tool. It's
> becoming a differentiating feature. I'm not familiar with TinyOWS though. Are you
> suggesting assimilating TinyOWS?

the advantage of this would be to avoid having to deploy another
server along side mapserver in order to treat the wfs-t side of an
application,as you pointed out. in finality it would mean porting of
the tinyows code into mapserver.

>
> > comments most welcome !
> >
> > thomas
>
> Steve
>
>