[mapserver-dev] Heads Up, RFC81 committed

[thomas bonfort]

Hi guys,

RFC81 with its offset labels with leader lines has just been committed
to trunk. Along with the new functionality, there has been some
significant refactoring to the code in mapdraw.c (notably the shape
and labelcache drawing) to make it more readable and cut down on
unnecessary computation and memory allocations. Along with the work in
RFC77 on multiple labels, this implies that there are some subtle
rendering differences in label placement compared to 6.0, and although
I have msautotested the new code and tried to extensively test all
use-cases, there might be some more significant issues. Please bring
those up on this list if you consider any change of behavior as a bug.

The second impact of RFCs 77 and 81 is that we are seriously
considering deprecating ANNOTATION layers in 6.2, with a planned
removal in 7.0. We believe that all the functionality they implement
can now be achieved with label styles, and the removal will allow us
to cut down on code complexity in the drawing and labelcache phases.
The new multi-label support of RFC77 and RFC81 will not work on
annotation layers, and will produce an error message.

With the inspire code committed, I believe we can start getting ready
for the 6.2 release phase ?

cheers,
thomas