[mapserver-users] Mr.SID

[kenboss]

Obviously, the C SDK would be the way to go for true integration with mapserver, 
but, as noted, support for anything other than Windows is lacking.  Lizardtech 
has been saying for years (literally) that they're working on support for the 
SDK on other platforms, but it never happens.  

In the meantime, you might find what you're looking for in the MrSID Image 
Server, which is available for download at:

http://www.lizardtech.com/cgi-bin/products/desc.pl?tsb=25718

(see https://www.lizardtech.com/cgi-bin/products/products.pl for a full listing 
of downloadable products)

The Image Server is a just set of perl scripts with a couple of accompanying 
binaries to do the image decompression/extraction work.  It is supported under 
Linux, Solaris, and Windows NT web environments.  You could play around with 
hacking the perl scripts, or you can just drop the binaries into your cgi 
directory and call them directly from your pages.  Unfortunately, although MrSID 
is geospatially aware, the binary programs expect arguments in terms of pixels, 
so you'd have query your MrSID image for a bit of metadata and then do some math 
before you could submit the request for a portion of an image.  Inelegant, but 
doable.

We run an applet on some of our pages to overlay mapserver-generated transparent 
gifs on top of jpegs coming out of another package.  The same approach could be 
taken with MrSID images served from the Image Server.

(Steve, I don't see the overlay applet anywhere on the mapserver site.  If you 
think it'd be worthwhile putting it up there, I could whip up some documentation 
for it.)

--Ken



> The SDK web page for Mr.SID decoder is here:
> 
> http://www.lizardtech.com/developer/index.php?family=2
> 
> As Stephen notes, they do not seem to currently support UNIX (the title
> says "Solaris", but the body says "currently only available for
> Windows"). I guess this is something a prospective developer could
> followup on w/ lizardtech.
> 
> kenboss wrote:
> > 
> > I don't think that MrSID's image server supports WMS, but it is scripted in
> > Perl.  I would guess that it wouldn't be too hard to customize the image 
server
> > a bit and then incorporate calls to both it and mapserver within a java 
applet.
> > Or maybe it could be incorporated directly into the ArcIMS emulation bit...
> > 
> > --Ken
> 
> > > On the Mr. SID issue. If someone can convince LizardTech to support 
platforms
> > other than Windows then it will be supported, until then...
> > >
> > > You might be able to integrate Mr. Sid's image server into a MapServer
> > application, especially if that product supported WMS.
> > >
> > > Steve
> > >
> > > Stephen Lime
> > > Data & Applications Manager
> > >
> 
> -- 
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>      | Paul Ramsey
>      | Refractions Research
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