MapServer 4.4.0-beta1 released

[Daniel Morissette]

Hi,

The MapServer team is working hard to bring you a release of MapServer
4.4.0 before the end of this year. The first step towards the release is
MapServer 4.4.0-beta1 which we are proud to release today. You can find
more details on the release plan in the wiki at
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleasePlan44

There are still several issues/bugs being worked on, but the software is
in very good shape and ready for power users to start playing with the
new features and report any issues they may find. If you think you found
a bug then please use bugzilla. We have done a feature freeze a few days
ago, so there will be no more new developments before 4.4.0, just fixes.

The mapserver-4.4.0-beta1.tar.gz source package should be available on
the main MapServer website shortly. In the meantime you can get it from
http://maptools.org/dl/mapserver-4.4.0-beta1.tar.gz

The documentation team is in the process of bringing the documentation
up to date for 4.4. The latest version of the docs is available at
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/doc/develop_index.html

I will include at the end of this message a rough list of what's new in
MapServer 4.4.

Windows binaries are also available:

Howard Butler wrote:
 >
 > MapServer 4.4.0 beta1 Windows Binaries are available at:
 > http://hobu.stat.iastate.edu/mapserver/build_output/beta_4_4_0
 >
 > I have compiled a 4.4.0 beta1 "kitchen sink" release that includes GDAL,
 > Proj.4, PDF output, SWF output, MrSID, NetCDF, JPEG2000, ECW, PostGIS,
 > GML, WFS Server/Client, WMS Server/Client, DEBUG output, GIF, PNG, and
 > JPEG.
 >
 > Oracle Spatial and SDE are *not* provided, but if you are interested,
 > contact me off list.
 >
 > Python MapScript is also available.

Finally, PHP MapScript binaries for Windows should be available in a few
minutes at http://maptools.org/php_mapscript/index.phtml?page=downloads.html

Daniel
------------------------------------------------------------
  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------


Here is a rough list of what's new in MapServer 4.4:

* Added WCS support (server only)

* Added support for Time dimension in WMS

* Lots of fixes/improvements to the OGC WMS and WFS interfaces (too many
to list here). MapServer 4.4 passes all the tests of the OGC WMS 1.1.1
test suite and is ready to be certified (Formal "WMS Compliance"
certification with OGC may be completed in time for the final release).

* Added FastCGI support

* Lots of fixes to allow running in long-lived processes and
multithreaded environments (memory leaks, mutex locking, etc.).

* Added connection pooling (implemented for SDE and PostGIS).

* Lots of improvements to SWIG MapScript API and docs.

* Support for i18n encodings in map labels. Tested with Chinese,
Japanese and Thai.

* Added ability to produce rotated maps (i.e. North is not at the top)

* Completion of SDE versioned query support

* ... and many many more fixes and enhancements. See the HISTORY.TXT
that comes with the source package for the complete list.


--------------

More detailed excerpt from HISTORY.TXT:

Version 4.4.0-beta1 (2004-10-21)
--------------------------------

- 'make shared' compilation target now supports some kind of versioning,
   should at least prevent libmap.so version collisions when upgrading
   MapServer on a server (bug 982)

- When no RULE parameter has been specified in the WMS request
   a legend should be returned with all classes for the specified LAYER.
   Changes has been made in mapwms.c (bug 653). Also if the SCALE parameter
   is provided in the WMS request is will be used to determine whether
   the legend of the specified layer should be drawn in the case that the
   layer is scale dependant (big 809).

- Nested layers in the capabilities are supported by using a new metadata
   tag WMS_LAYER_GROUP (bug 776)

- Added greyscale+alpha render support if mapdrawgdal.c: Bug 965.

- Added --with-fastcgi support to configure.

- support OGC mapcontext through mapserver cgi : Bug 946

- support for reading 3d shape file (z) : Bug 869.

- add php mapscript functions to expose the z element : Bug 870

- imageObj::write() method for SWIG mapscript (bug 941).

- Protect users from 3 potential sources of threading problems: parsing
   expression strings outside of msLoadMap, evaluating mapserver logical
   expressions, and loading symbol set files outside of msLoadMap (bug 339).

- Various fixes allowing unit tests to run leak free under valgrind on
   i686.  Memory is now properly freed when exiting from common error
   states (bug 927).

- Restored ability to render transparent (indexed or alpha) pixmap symbols
   on RGB map images, including annotation layers and embedded scalebars.
   This feature remains OFF by default for map layers and is enabled by
   specifying TRANSPARENCY ALPHA (bugs 926, 490).

- mapserv_fcgi.c removed.  Committed new comprehensive FastCGI support.

- New mapserver exceptions for Java mapscript thanks to Umberto Nicoletti
   (bug 895).

- Removed mapindex.c, mapindex.h, shpindex.c components of old unused
   shapefile indexing method.

- Use the symbol size instead of 1 for the default style size value. This is
   done by setting the default size to -1 and adding
msSymbolGetDefaultSize()
   everywhere to get the default symbolsize (Bug 751).

- Correct Bug with GML BBOX output when using a <Filter> with a
   GetFeature request (Bug 913).

- Encode all metadatas and mapfile parameters outputed in a xml document
   (Bug 802).

- Implement the ENCODING label parameter to support internationalization.
   Note this require the iconv library (Bug 858).

- New and improved Java mapscript build provided by unicoletti at prometeo.it
   and examples by Y.K. Choo (bug 876).

- MapContext: Cleanup code to make future integration more easily and
output
   SRS and DataURL in the order required by the spec.

- Fixed issue with polygon outline colors and brush caching (bug 868).

- New C# mapscript makefiles and examples provided by Y.K. Choo
   <ykchoo at geozervice.com> committed under mapscript/csharp/ (bug 867).

- Renamed 'string' member of labelCacheMemberObj to 'text' to avoid
   conflicts in SWIG mapscript with C# and Java types (bug 852).

- Fixed Bug 866 : problem when generating an sld on a pplygon layer

- SWIG mapscript: map's output image width and height should be set
   simultaneously using new mapObj::setSize() method.  This performs
   necessary map geotransform computation.  Direct setting of map width
   and height is deprecated (bug 836).

- Fixed bug 832 (validate srs value) : When the SRS parameter in a GetMap
   request contains a SRS that is valid for some, but not all of the layers
   being requested, then the server shall throw a Service Exception
   (code = "InvalidSRS"). Before this fix, mapserver use to reproject
   the layers to the requested SRS.

- Fixed bug 834: SE_ROW_ID in SDE not initialized for unregistered SDE
tables

- Fixed bug 823 : adding a validation of the SRS parameter when doing
   a GetMap request on a wms server. Here is the OGC statement :
   'When the SRS parameter in a GetMap request contains a SRS
   that is valid for some, but not all of the layers being requested,
   then the server shall throw a Service Exception (code = "InvalidSRS").'

- Set the background color of polygons or circles when using transparent
   PIXMAP symbol.

- SWIG mapscript class extensions are completely moved from mapscript.i
   into separate interface files under mapscript/swiginc.

- Overhaul of mapscript unit testing framework with a comprehensive test
   runner mapscript/python/tests/runtests.py.

- Modified the MS_VALID_EXTENT macro to take an extent as its argument
   instead of the quartet of members. MapServer now checks that extents
input
   through the mapfile are valid in mapfile.c (web, map, reference,
   and layer).  Modified msMapSetExtent in mapobject.c to use the new
   macro instead of its home-grown version. Modified all cases that used
   MS_VALID_EXTENT to the new use case.

- Layers now accept an EXTENT through the mapfile (bug 786). Nothing
   is done with it at this point, and getExtent still queries the
   datasource rather than getting information from the mapfile-specified
   extent.

- Fixed problem with WMS GetFeatureInfo when map was reprojected. Was a
   problem with msProjectRect and zero-size search rectangles (bug 794)

- MapServer version now output to mapscriptvars and read by Perl Makefile.PL
   and Python setup.py (bug 795).

- Map.web, layer, and class metadata are exposed in SWIG mapscript as
   first-class objects (bug 737).

- Add support for spatial filters in the SLD (Bug 782)

- A few fixes to allow php_mapscript to work with both PHP4 and PHP5.
   PHP5 support should still be considered experimental. (bug 718)

- Fixed SDE only recognizing SE_ROW_ID as the unique column (bug 536).
   The code now autosenses the unique row id column.

- Enhanced SDE support to include support for queries against
   user-specified versions.  The version name can be specified as the
   last parameter of the CONNECTION string.

- Fixed automated generation of onlineresource in OWS GetCapabilities
   when the xxx_onlineresource metadata is not specified: the map= parameter
   used to be omitted and is now included in the default onlineresource if
   it was explicitly set in QUERY_STRING (bug 643)

- Fixed possible crash when producing WMS errors INIMAGE (bug 644)

- Fixed automated generation of onlineresource in OWS GetCapabilities
   when the xxx_onlineresource metadata is not specified: the map= parameter
   used to be omitted and is now included in the default onlineresource if
   it was explicitly set in QUERY_STRING (bug 643)

- Fixed an issue with annotation label overlap. There was an issue with
   the way msRectToPolygon was computing it's bounding box. (bug 618)

- Removed "xbasewohoo" debug output when using JOINs and fixed a few
   error messages related to MySQL joins (bug 652)

- Fixed "raster cracking" problem (bug 493)

- Improvements to Makefile.vc, and nmake.opt so that a mapscriptvars file
   can be produced on windows.

- Updated setup.py so Python MapScript builds on win32.

- Added preliminary raster query support.

- No more Python-stopping but otherwise benign errors raised from
   msDrawWMSLayer() (bug 650).

- Finished prototyping all MapServer functions used by SWIG-Mapscript
   and added 'void' to prototypes of no-arg functions, eliminating all
   but two SWIG-Mapscript build warnings (bug 658).

- Mapscript: resolved issue with pens and dynamic drawing of points (bug
663).

- Mapscript: fixes to tests of shape copying and new image symbols.

- Mapscript: new OWSRequest class based on cgiRequestObj structure in
   cgiutil.h is a first step to allow programming with MapServer's OWS
   dispatching (bug 670).

- Mapscript: styles member of classObj structure is no longer exposed to
   SWIG (bug 611).

- Implementation geotransform/rotation support in cgi core, and mapscript.i.

- Testing: fixed syntax error, 'EPSG' -> 'epsg' in test.map (bug 687).
   Added an embedded scalebar which demonstrates that bug 519 is fixed.
   The test data package is also made more complete by including two fonts
   from Bitstream's open Vera fonts (bug 694).

- Mapscript (SWIG): remove promote and demote methods from layerObj.  Use
   of container's moveLayerUp/moveLayerDown is better, and this brings
   the module nearer to PHP-Mapscript (bug 692).

- mapogr.cpp: Now echos CPLGetLastErrorMsg() results if OGR open fails.

- mapraster.c: fixed tile index corruption problem (bug 698)

- Mladen Turk's map copying macros in mapcopy.h clean up map cloning and
   allow for copying of fontset and symbolset.  Added cloning tests in
   python/tests/testCloneMap.py and refactored testing suite (bugs 640 &
701).

- Mapscript: removing obsolete python/setup_wnone.py file.

- CONFIG MS_NONSQUARE YES now enables non-square pixel mode (mostly for
WMS).
   Changes in mapdraw.c (msDrawMap()) to use the geotransform "hack" to
allow
   non-square pixels.

- When using the text/html mime type in a GetFeature request, if the
   layer's template is not set to a valid file, errors occur.
   Correction is : the text/html is not advertized by default and
   will only be advertized if the user has defined
   "WMS_FEATURE_INFO_MIME_TYPE"  "text/html" (bug 736)

- Make PHP MapScript's layer->open() produce a PHP Warning instead of a
   Fatal error (bug 742)

- MapServer hash tables are now a structure containing a items pointer
   to hashObj. See maphash.h for new prototypes of hash table functions.
   In SWIG mapscript, Map, Layer, and Class metadata are now instances
of the
   new hashTableObj class.  fontset.fonts and Map.configoptions are also
   instances of hashTableObj.  The older getMetaData/setMetaData and
   metadata iterator methods can be deprecated (bug 737).

- Mapscript-SWIG: made the arguments of mapObj and layerObj constructors
   optional.  A layerObj can now exist outside of a map and can be added
   to a mapObj using the insertLayer method.  mapObj.removeLayer now
   returns a copy of the removed Layer rather than an integer (bug 759).

- Fixed $map->processTemplate() which was always returning NULL.
   Bug introduced in version 4.0 in all flavours of MapScript (bug 410)