Proof of Concept Gradient Coloring and Dev question

[Bill Binko]

Hi everyone,

I have just implemented a quick hack to add gradient coloring to mapserver
4.4.1.  This was just an itch I was scratching, but I'd be happy to feed
it back into the code.  My main question here is how do I do that: is
there a CVS repository?  Do I mail in patches?  To whom?

Regarding the gradient coloring, it works like this:  you choose a numeric
field in your data (I've tested with PostGIS, but anything you can use for
classitem or labelitem should work), and create a style like this:

STYLE
  COLOR 60 60 60
  MINCOLOR 0 0 0
  MAXCOLOR 255 255 0
  MINVALUE 0.0
  MAXVALUE 300000.0
  GRADIENTITEM "sale_price"
END

That takes the sale_price field from the shapes values, maps its value to
a percentage between MINVALUE and MAXVALUE and then picks the color that's
appropriate from the color range.

For a quick snapshot of how this looks, I've mapped relative size of
parcels (as a percentage) to these colors:

                MINCOLOR 127 29 200 #Purple
                MAXCOLOR 255 255 0  #Yellow

You can see the results here: http://www.binko.net/gradient.png

As I said, this is still in the proof of concept stage, and I haven't
tested against any rendering except GD (although in theory it should
work).

Any help on future direction and how to contribute back would be
appreciated.

Bill