[mapserver-dev] MapServer styles or symbols? What is the concept?

[Tamas Szekeres]

Hi Devs,

As of mapserver 6.0 many of the symbol parameters (such as line
patterns) have been moved to styles. Since I'm not sure about the
reason behind, could someone clarify how do we define what is a symbol
and what is a style in MapServer? Formerly I have been thinking that
the symbols should define the shape (like patterns for brushes and
lines, specify the truetype fonts etc) and the styles should define
the actual drawing attributes like colors and sizes. Since the changes
in Mapserver 6.0 this concept seems to be invalidated.

One of the most problematic effect with this concept is that we cannot
easily implement OGR auto styles in MapServer. Currentlly the OGR
driver maps the style id-s to symbols and we could define a separate
symbols for each style id to implement the MapInfo supported styles
(see attached). However with the recent approach we should rather map
the OGR style id-s to classes and styles to provide a similar effect.
Could someone suggest a reasonable solution?

Does MapServer capable to implement the MapInfo brush and line
patterns (see attached), or we would still require to think about
enhancements in the rendering engine to provide the same (or similar)
look?


 Best regards,

Tamas
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