[mapserver-users] 3.5 changes and so on...

[Stephen Lime]

Greetings folks: 3.5 is just about ready for primetime and tonite I'll commit the
last set of changes that affect map files. If you use the nightly build please 
take note:

  1) added new layer type, CIRCLE. Circles are defined by 2 points, a center
point and a point on the edge of the circle. Any datasource can produce these
features. The limitation is that a circle feature must contain exactly 2 points.

At the moment CIRCLE layers can only be drawn and not queried. This will change
soon. They also can't be annotated, mainly cause I'm not sure how I want to do
it. I think the should be annotated on the edge of the circle rather than in the center
of the displayed area. Comments?

  2) the POLYLINE layer type is gone. You now control fills and outlines for POLYGON
and CIRCLE features using class values. So to create a polygon with no fill and a
thick border use something like:

  CLASS
    SYMBOL 'circle'
    SIZE 5
    OUTLINECOLOR 255 255 0
  END

OUTLINECOLOR with no COLOR gives you the same effect as the old POLYLINE type.

To fill a polygon AND have a thick outline use:

  CLASS
    COLOR 255 0 0
    OVERLAYSYMBOL 'circle'
    OVERLAYSIZE 5
    OVERLAYOUTLINECOLOR 255 255 0
  END

This was not possible before with a single layer definition. You can even do dashed outlines
of a hashed fill with a single class.

  3) the SYMBOL and LABEL parameters that took no arguments (i.e. FILLED and ANTIALIAS)
now require them. This was done simply to be consistant with everything else. Both parameters
take true or false as arguments.

These changes have been document in the 3.5 mapfile reference. I appologize for the edits you'll
have to make but these are necessary changes. I'll change the release designation for 3.5 from
alpha to beta tonite as well.

Other notes:

Stay away from Freetype 2. The GD interface to it doesn't seem nearly as good as the one for Freetype
1. I've seen all sorts of weirdness with font baseline alignment with rotated text and corruption of images
when ANTILIASing is turned off. Freetype 1 does not exhibit these problems. I don't think the problem is
Freetype itself, rather the GD interface. I hope to have patched versions of both gd/freetype support
code available soon.

Steve


Stephen Lime
Data & Applications Manager

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937