[mapserver-users] RE: [MapServer-users] Meeting

[Fawcett, David]

Yeah, I can see your point.  20 whole hours to get a powerful, flexible, continually updated, did I mention FREE software program to work.  You could just spring $10,000 for ARC IMS and have your own map up and running in 10 hours.

The documentation is getting better and better.  The resources that could have been put into documentation in the past, have instead been put into new development, added functionality, and bug-fixes.  The people developing MapServer, Mapscript, PHP Mapscript, etc. have put a lot of unpaid hours into improving the product, and they share their apps and code. 

Have you noticed that bug-fixes are often committed to the CVS or PHP modules within a day of notification?  Noticed how willing people are willing to help when you post problems on the listserv?

Yeah, I think I will go out and buy ARC IMS, SDE, and Oracle spatial.  Should be much less painful.

</sarcasm>
</rant>

David.
> ----------
> From: 	Mike Neuman[SMTP:mcn at engarde.com]
> Sent: 	Tuesday, July 24, 2001 6:08 PM
> To: 	mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
> Subject: 	RE: [mapserver-users] Meeting
> 
> > MapServer is not just a success, it is a raving success.
> 
>   I'm new to the Mapserver community. I would agree with this statement from
> a *technical* point of view, but strongly disagree from an approchability
> point of view. There are virtually NO examples of how to create maps, do
> things in mapscript, etc. It took at least 20 hours of me fighting with
> Mapscript and a .map file before I could get a relatively simple map to
> display. Then another 8 hours to get the projection right. If I didn't hate
> my GIS program so much, I probably would have given it up after the first
> few hours.
> 
>   The documentation has several major errors (queryByPoint still appears on
> the web site, when queryUsingPoint is correct), PHP Mapscript crashes my
> webserver when executing simple (and correct, according to the docs) code,
> and Perl Mapscript coredumps whenever you create a new class in an existing
> layer or a new layer in an existing map. To get the projection stuff to work
> as you might expect, I had to upgrade to 3.5. My existing Mapscript code
> stopped working entirely (with only minor changes made to fix the semantic
> changes of msSaveImage) by spitting out a blank map, so I had to downgrade
> to 3.3. Finally, in attempt to debug several things on my own, I downloaded
> and installed SWIG. Unfortunately, the .i files are no longer compatible
> with the current version of SWIG. I could not build mapscript from the CVS
> checkout, and I could not overwrite any of the _wrap files on the nightly
> builds.
> 
>   All of these problems have workarounds, but without examples, it's an
> *extremely* painful process to figure them out.
> 
>   So, I implore the Mapserver community: Contribute every Mapscript and .map
> sample file you can find and *put it in the distribution*. Or at least make
> another distribution (and ms_demo doesn't cut it) that has dozens of
> examples. The Mapscript examples IN the mapscript distro are worthless--they
> don't even draw a map!
> 
>   Thanks for listening. :-) I do love Mapserver. It's something I've wanted
> for a long time. I can't imagine how fast Mapserver's use would spread if it
> were approachable. That's all I ask.
> 
> -Mike
>