Version 3.3 wish list...

[Banister Trevor]

I like this idea of more control from forms. I'm having a tough time getting
granular control without building lots of .map files.

How about an intermediate step which allows all the parameters from a .map
file to be called from a form, or from the query string? This technique
would help in using mapserver as a backend workhorse to serve images to
multiple front end servers.

This would also allow other front end systems (running PHP, Cold Fusion,
ASP, etc.) access to generate layer parameters without having to write a
temporary .map file on the mapserver, on the fly (a kludgey technique I'm
using to change the order and projection in which layers are presented)

I'm toying with the idea of letting users upload their own layers (shapes or
images) to add value to the maps the generate. Being able to generate a map
without a .map file would make this much easier too.



Since this is my first posting, let me take a minute to say thanks for
creating mapserv, and making it open source. I hope to be able to contribute
some code once I get up to speed on its internals.

Does anyone else have an interest in serving up MrSID images (with sid world
files)?
For those that don't already know, MrSID is a wavelet compression system
developed by Lizard tech (www.lizardtech.com) which is lossy like JPEG, but
produces much better compression (20:1) with hardly any loss.


Trevor Banister
Sr. Application Designer (and builder, deployer, maintainer, .....)
Space Imaging
TBanister at SpaceImaging.com

To satisfy the legal department:
The preceding statements and opinions are my own and not those of my
employer, Space Imaging.

-----Original Message-----
From: kenboss at dilbert.dnr.state.mn.us
[mailto:kenboss at dilbert.dnr.state.mn.us]
Sent: Monday, June 28, 1999 10:08 AM
To: steve.lime at dnr.state.mn.us; mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: Re: Version 3.3 wish list...


Steve--

How about mapfile-based definition of classes for thematic rasters,
following 
the model of the shapefile stuff.  It'd be really cool to be able to do 
hierarchical class collapsing this way, rather than having to maintain
separate 
rasters for that purpose.  With the advent of MapScript, we'd then have the 
capability to let users define through html forms how they want to see the 
classes displayed.  As a side benefit, we'd also get dynamic legend creation
for 
raster images out of the deal.  Of course we'd also want to retain the
current 
mechanisms as a default mode, so that if no classes are defined in the
mapfile 
for a raster, then it is displayed in accordance with the associated color 
table.  I realize that this may be a rather large pain to develop, given the

varying requirements for the different raster formats supported, but as long
as 
we're talking wish lists, I thought I'd throw that in...

--Ken