Antwort: [mapserver-dev] PDF support wrap up...

[Brent Fraser]

Benedikt,

umn-ms at hydrotec.de wrote:
> 
>>  Do you do any labeling with Mapserver?  If so, any problems with
>>  label placement?
> Sorry. I don't see your point . Label placement works like always... (?)

Sorry for my terse question.  When using other GIS tools (e.g. ArcView) to produce a map for printing, I will occasionally slightly move some automatically-generated text such as point labels on the map to improve readability.  Since you are using Mapserver's raster output I was curious if you had label placement/readability problems and if you had solved them using other methods (rendering the labels separately in Apache/fop overtop the PNG for example).

One of my reasons for getting better vector PDF/SVG rendering out of Mapserver is to have the ability to interactively "touch-up" the graphics with a GUI app such as Inkscape.  


>>  What is the typical size (pixels/lines) of the PNG?
> Important point.
> * Papersize A4(210mm x 297mm ) and A3(297mm x 420mm)
> * Maps cover about 80% of the Paper
> * 150DPI
> 
> -> Approx 1,700,000 pixels for A4 and 3,400,000 pixels for A3.
> 
> We'd like to generate bigger Maps: More dpi, bigger papersizes.
> Problem is not Mapserver but the PDF-Generator. (Runs out of memory).
> 
> In the case, that the generated pics become to large for mapserver,
> one could use tiles. But this would not solve the memory-problem of the
> PDF-generator.

My goal is to use Mapserver to generate an A0 size PDF containing vectors and a full page coverage 24-bit satellite image at 300dpi.  We've tried this before (by hacking mapserver) and were barely successful (see http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2008-April/055593.html, and 
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2006-January/014307.html).

Tiled output was not something I had considered, but it is interesting because of it's scalability.  We occasionally make satellite image map wall murals (120 inches x 80 inches, or larger).

Thanks!
Brent Fraser