[mapserver-users] arrows on lines without truetype

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Puneet,

The problem boils down to this:

1) you have to apply a pattern to a line segment the generates the arrow
given that the line can be drawn in any random direction. (ie TrueType,
or something)

or

2) you have to insert a symbol at some location on the line and you have
to "orient" the symbol with the direction of the line
2a) "orient" implies that you either use a rotatable symbol like
TrueType or select a pre-oriented (ie: rotated) symbol from  a set of
symbols.

Soooo, you might get away with creating a set of pre-oriented symbols,
and add a field to all your records as to which symbol to use for each
line segment. Then set up an annotation layer with a CLASSITEM "ORIENT"
to select the appropriate symbol and have a point in the shp file which
is used to place the symbol.

It would be easy to write a perl script to pre process your roads and
ident the oneway roads, and create a point layer with say the midpoint
of the road segment as a location and an attribute of ORIENT that can be
used to select the symbol.

This might seem like a lot of work but is should work pretty well and
give you contol of the placement of the symbols. For example, you could
create multple symbol points on a longer line by adding multiple
records.

Hope this helps,
  -Steve

Puneet Kishor wrote:
> 
> ok, the much asked arrow question.
> 
> how can I make a line with an occasional arrowhead in it to display
> digitized direction without using TrueType?
> 
> tia to you symbology wizards,
> 
> pk/