[Mapserver-users] GDAL, TIFF, JPEG Question

[Ed McNierney]

The chief problem is user confusion; there are many options and it can
be easy for the user to not understand what driver is reading the data.
It is certainly possible to build GDAL *without* support for TIFF and
JPEG images, so the report "INPUT=TIFF, INPUT=JPEG, INPUT=GDAL" doesn't
necessarily mean redundant drivers - but it probably does <g>!

I believe there have been discussions about removing the "native" TIFF
support (at least) in favor of GDAL, since there is little advantage to
it and there are many new "TIFF" options that are really new features
only supported by GDAL.

MapServer doesn't get "confused" - the user does <g>.  But that's
something we should strive to avoid.

	- Ed (very minor MapServer attendant deity)

Ed McNierney
President and Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Pericles S. Nacionales [mailto:nacional at cbs.umn.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 3:49 PM
To: mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: [Mapserver-users] GDAL, TIFF, JPEG Question

Dear MapServer gods,

I'm seeing a lot of folks send the output of "mapserv -v" like this:

MapServer version 4.0.1 OUTPUT=PNG OUTPUT=JPEG OUTPUT=WBMP OUTPUT=PDF
SUPPORTS=PROJ SUPPORTS=FREETYPE SUPPORTS=WMS_SERVER SUPPORTS=WMS_CLIENT
INPUT=TIFF INPUT=JPEG INPUT=OGR INPUT=GDAL INPUT=SHAPEFILE

At first glance it all looks good.  But then look at  INPUT=TIFF,
INPUT=JPEG, INPUT=GDAL.  Isn't compiling GDAL, TIFF and JPEG together as
input libraries not a good idea?  Or is this no longer an issue?  I ask
because I'm seeing a lot of this and am wondering if we should include
something like this in the MapServer FAQ:

If you compile GDAL support make sure to disable TIFF and JPEG input
support.  
This can be accomplished by adding "--without-tiff --without-jpeg"  
parameters when running "configure".  Alternatively, you can remove
"-DUSE_TIFF" and "-DUSE_JPEG" in your Makefile (or Makefile.vc) before
running make (or nmake).

What exactly are the problems that come up when TIFF and JPEG libs are
compiled together with GDAL?  I know MapServer gets confused when
reading TIFF/GeoTIFF images.  Are there others?


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