[mapserver-users] XML mapfile?

[C F]

Maybe I just don't know MapServer well enough, but I'm having trouble 
getting all the information I need to get out of the mapfile with the 
restrictions imposed by template file architecture.  In other words, I want 
to get at specific elements in the mapfile from the client which is 
typically done by placing tokens in template files.
It seems that this and many other problems I encounter could be solved by 
making the .map file format XML based.  I searched the archives and have 
seen quite a bit of discussion on it but I didn't a conclusion.  The benefit 
for me being that I could download and easily parse and retrieve any 
information I needed using XPath.  Is this being considered at all?  If so, 
I'd be happy to contribute to the discussion and development (wherever I 
could, but I don't know the C language yet) if that would help.  A 
combination of an XML mapfile, XSLT templates and XPath extremely powerful 
compared the current template files.  If I'm not making any sense or anyone 
would like more specifics on what that architecture would be like, I'd be 
happy to elaborate... once I nail it down :)

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.