[Mapserver-users] I'm getting a little frustrated...

[Ed McNierney]

Paul -

I'm not familiar with the raster data in the tutorial; it can be tricky
working with raster data you don't know well.  And maybe someone else
can comment on why this tutorial data is working oddly.

The first thing I'd suggest - and it's just a guess - is to comment out
the PROCESSING statement and the OFFSITE statement.  Your filename ends
in "_8bit.tif" so it looks like an 8-bit file, but the PROCESSING
directive is more suited to a 24-bit image.  OFFSITE might not hurt, but
you don't need it with just one image so take it out to keep things
simple.

Second, your EXTENT and PROJECTION don't match.  EPSG code 4326 is WGS84
decimal degrees, so you're saying that your raster is in a "geographic"
or decimal degrees projection.  That's fine, but that EXTENT isn't in
degrees at all!  If you want to produce the output in decimal degrees,
your EXTENT should be the extent of the image in degrees, and you should
add UNITS DD (decimal degrees) below the EXTENT line.

If you're not sure about the exact geographic extent of the image, use
the LISTGEO command-line tool to examine it.

	- Ed

Ed McNierney
President and Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
North Chelmsford, MA  01863
ed at topozone.com
(978) 251-4242 


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul VanDyke [mailto:pvandyke at kib.co.kodiak.ak.us] 
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 1:59 PM
To: Ed McNierney; mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: RE: [Mapserver-users] I'm getting a little frustrated...

Thanks Ed for getting back so quickly.  I belive in the open-source
movement because people like you make it work!

Here is my map file that I'm using; it's an adaptation of the example
1-5 in the tutorial and uses that tiff file.

MAP
   NAME example
   IMAGETYPE PNG
   EXTENT 201621.496941 -294488.285333 1425518.020722 498254.511514
   SIZE 400 300
   SHAPEPATH "c:/program files/apache group/apache2/htdocs/data"
   DEBUG ON

WEB
   TEMPLATE 'example.html'
   IMAGEPATH '/data/tmp/'
   IMAGEURL '/tmp/'
   LOG 'C:\mapserver.log'
END


LAYER # MODIS raster layer begins here
  NAME         modis
  DATA         "raster/mod09a12003161_ugl_ll_8bit.tif"
  STATUS       DEFAULT
  TYPE         RASTER
  PROCESSING   "BANDS=1,2,3"
  OFFSITE      71 74 65

  PROJECTION
    "init=epsg:4326"
  END
END # MODIS raster layer ends here

# End of LAYER DEFINITIONS -------------------------------

END # end of map file


As I said, I'm a newbie to GIS so the projection stuff is foreign to me.
I figured that using the example file would be a safe bet.  Please
comment on what you see.

Thanks,

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: Ed McNierney [mailto:ed at topozone.com]
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 9:53 AM
To: Paul VanDyke; mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: RE: [Mapserver-users] I'm getting a little frustrated...


Paul -

There's nothing wrong with raster support on Windows - it works just
fine.  Posting your MAP file would help, too.  Are you sure the raster
layer is enabled (STATUS DEFAULT) in your map file?

The biggest problem people have with raster data is that it is typically
projected, while much vector data is not.  That means you're mixing data
with two different coordinate systems in the same map.  That's perfectly
OK and MapServer can handle it just fine, but you need to accurately
describe the projection of each of your input data sets AND the desired
output projection so MapServer can figure out what to do.

	- Ed

Ed McNierney
President and Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
North Chelmsford, MA  01863
ed at topozone.com
(978) 251-4242