[mapserver-dev] [Support for reading SVG symbols-MapServer-GSoC]Kiran Anjaneya Varma

[Daniel Morissette]

Hi Kiran,

Congratulations and welcome to the project. I meant to write an 
introduction email but have been too busy this week, so I'm glad you 
just did it.

I think the first step for the project will be to define exactly what we 
mean by SVG symbol support. In your proposal you mentioned that you'd 
expect the SVG symbol to be included in the output and rendered by the 
browser, but as I think I wrote in one comment, MapServer is mostly 
about generating images, so things can't work as you expected for the 
image output formats (GIF/PNG/JPEG) which account for most usages.

Instead, we'll need to find a way to efficiently parse and render the 
SVG symbol definition in a similar way to what is currently done for 
symbols of type vector in MapServer. We'll probably also need to define 
a subset of SVG that we allow for symbol definitions since we can't 
support the whole spec.

This will require some discussion on this -dev list with the other 
developers to pick the best approach... and in the meantime, to feed 
this discussion, you could start by the following:

1- Have a look at the way vector symbols are handled in mapsymbol.c... 
browsing the source without a specific objejctive may be a bit of a 
rough start though, so perhaps just getting familiar with the use of 
vector symbols in a map would already be a good start.

2- Research and evaluate options for a non-intrusive open source library 
that can be used to parse a SVG symbol definition and render it in a 
MapServer image. By non-intrusive, I mean that the library should have a 
friendly open source license, be light-weight and ideally it should not 
add any no new dependency to the MapServer build process other than itself.

3- I wonder if Cairo or any of the new rendering stuff in the graphics 
branch could help with SVG symbols. I guess this is more a question for 
Thomas.

Finally, I guess I need to do my homework as well if I want to guide you 
properly.

Note to all other developers: all inputs and contributions welcome to 
make this a project a success.

Daniel



kiran varma wrote:
>   Hi all
>            I am A Kiran Anjaneya Varma 3rd year undergraduate ,my 
> proposal[Support for reading SVG symbols-MapServer] has been accepted as 
> part of GSoC  2009
>          My mentor is Mr.Daniel Morissette
>          Thank you  for accepting me as part of your reputed MapServer 
> project,I am very keen in working on this project .
>          So what is my next step for having a good start on the project, 
> I would also like to know about some of the sources and suggestions 
> through which i can get a good flexibility on my project before coding 
> day(May 23)
> 
> 
> looking forward to work successfully with u throughout this wonderful summer
> 
> Thanks regards
> A Kiran Anjaneya Varma
> 
> 
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-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/