[Mapserver-users] Re: Tif-Shp : HOWTO (basic)

[Vincent Schut]

<snip>
>
> Voila, I got that to work nicely thanks to help from people on the list,
> without the shp files nothing shows at all (why?), don't know why 24bit
> looks ugly.
>
> Hope this helps someone out there!
>
> P.
<snip>

Without the shape mapserver doesn't know where to place your tiff tiles. Then 
you should not use the tileindex/tileitem configuration, but simply have the 
tiff file in your DATA tag. However, if you use tiff files, you can use the 
internal tiling and/or overview feature of the tiff standard. Using 
gdal_translate you can save a tiff as tiled, so you don't need the 
shapefile/multiple tiff combination anymore. And with gdaladdo you can add 
lower resolution overviews, to have faster rendering at lower resolutions.
24bit looks ugly if you have 8bit output (which you always have with 
mapserver-3.6.x; 24-bit output is only available with mapserver-3.7/4.0) 
because mapserver uses a quite rough (but fast) 24-to-8bit rendering 
algorithm. Converting to 8-bit (indexed) using a more sophisticated algorithm 
gives you far better results but takes much more time. So it is prefereable 
to convert them yourself before loading them into mapserver.

Regards,
-- 
______________________________________
Vincent Schut
Sarvision B.V.
Wageningen, The Netherlands
www.sarvision.com