future directions for mapserver

[Michael Kleih]

Marc Jacquin wrote:

> Kleith,
>
> Seriuosly, how can you edit vector data as GIF images ?? With SVG or CGM you may, I agree with plug-ins. The prototype shows that editing is possible but only by transfering vector data to the client. And when compressed  (in this case of 250 fields) it represents only 50 Kb.
>

It IS possible: Each time the user wants to have something changed in his client a
request is made to the server to send an updated map. This may seem less
effiicient, but to my experience it is much faster, especially with big vector-
datasets (yours, with 50kB is rather small, I have datasets with several
MBs, which is not unusual). But even in your case, GIF images created
from vector data tend to be very small, so we could assume it would be
only 10 kB per requested image. This means that your user could request
5 times a modification to his map to have the same "cost" (in Bytes) as
transferring your 50 kB vector dataset to your client!

Michael