[mapserver-dev] rendering plugin status

[thomas bonfort]

Devs,

I've been working on the rendering overhaul for mapserver 6.0 in the
mapserver6 sandbox.
Featurewise, I think the transition is complete, and would now
appreciate it if you guys could give it a try on your platforms and
data, and report back on the problems that will inevitably arise.
The renderer directory in msautotest contains "unit" tests of the
functionality that should render smoothly across the different
rendering backends (aside from bitmap fonts and scalebar/legend
embedding with svg and pdf cairo backends).

Summary of the most disruptive changes:

* MapScripts are broken and won't compile, as there have been some api
changes to remove everything GD-specific.
* AGG backend is enabled by default and not optional.
* The GD backend only supports PC256 imagemodes. Setting RGB or RGBA
imagemodes should fall back to the AGG backend.
* the default imagetypes have somewhat changed:
   - png and gif : GD
   - png24 and jpeg : AGG
   - aggpng24 and aggjpeg have been removed
* PDF and SVG backends have been removed and replaced by their cairo
counterparts. The corresponding outputformat  drivers are CAIRO/PDF
and CAIRO/SVG, or the default "svg" and "pdf" imagetypes.
* png, jpeg, gif and freetype headers are required for compilation
* kml output is broken for now and won't compile, don't enable it
* probably some other points I've forgotten about.

good luck :)

thomas