[mapserver-users] MapInfo TAB format, general issues

[Martin, Daniel]

I've been using MapServer's new integration with MapInfo TAB formats
extensively.  I want to bring up some issues I've noticed with the MITAB
integration, mainly to get it into the mailing list archives for those
searching for answers like I OFTEN do.

- STYLEITEM "auto" doesn't extract the label information.  It is required to
create a second ANNOTATION layer for each STYLEITEM "auto" layer.  Helpful
to note that by naming both with the same NAME they will turn on and off
together.
- STYLEITEM "auto" shows a blank legend object in a template legend -
perhaps in a normal legend too but I only use template legends.
- Seamless layers will not work in "No Path" mode unless all layers are in
the same folder as the Seamless layer.  MapServer will return:
"msOGRFileOpen(): OGR error. Open failed for OGR connection
`\MyPath\MySeamlessLayer.TAB'. File not found or unsupported format. "
Using "Full Path" mode to create your seamless layer will also not work
unless the drive mapping on your MapServer machine matches that of the
machine you have MapInfo on for the layers.  If you have a centralized
geographic data store like I do, your only option may be to place all layers
into the same folder and create your Seamless layer.  MapInfo

Other than these issues and a Seamless layer bug that is fixed in the CVS,
the MapInfo integration is working like a champ.  I've even pulled in a
polygon  layer with 75 business regions, each with alternating colors, and
it looks identical to what it did in MapInfo.  What took me about 5 minutes
would've taken me an extremely long time and hundreds of lines of code to
recreate it in the mapfile by hand.  

It's a great feature, and very well done.  My thanks go to the developers.

-Dan Martin

PS, if any of the above are unknown *bugs* let me know and I will post a bug
report.