MapServer Priorities

[Stephen Lime]

Greetings: As always, I'm adding new features or trying to make old ones
work better. Here
are some ideas I've got and I'd like to get some feedback from users as
to what you would like
to see. If you've got some comments or might be willing to work on some
of these please let
me know. In no particular order:

  - On-the-fly data projection. Actually this is done, but needs
testing. Volunteers?

  - NT port. Actually this has be done (not by me), but the procedures
etc. need to be
     formallized and the package tested on that platform.

  - Although labeling has come a long way recently there is still alot
to do, namely
     string rotation, simple anti-aliasing. I've got code to do this but
it needs to be adapted
     to work with some of the mapserver options like multiline strings
and justification.

  - Improved spatial indexing. Mapserver uses a simple, but effective
gridding system
     to build spatial indexes. The grid is not optimized and a number of
performance gains
     could be made here.

  - 24-bit output. (i.e. bye-bye GIF). Gets rid of a bunch of
limitations and opens up tons
     of possiblities (at a price). PNG would be the leading candidate.
Again, I've almost completed
     a full color version of the GD library but it needs PNG/JPEG decode
and encode pieces and a
     host of other things. Actually we'd need a new library that
supports things like antialiasing...

  - MapScript, make maps from your favorite scripting language (i.e.
perl, TK/TCL) and add to
     them from generic sources like relational databases. Any SWIGers
out there (www.swig.org)?

Again, these are just things I'd like to see. Thanks.

Steve