Questions

[Jeff Portwine]

I have finally got mapserver working to the point that I've been able to
work with it a little bit, at least on a very basic level.    I have a lot
of questions that I'm having trouble finding answers to.   Some of these
answers may be on the website, but a lot of things are spread around and I'm
not always sure where to find them so just a pointer in the right direction
to find the answers I seek may be enough...

Anyway, just a few questions for now.

First of all, does it matter what projection I use for my maps, as long as I
am consistant?

I've created a very basic michigan map using shapefile layers, but it
appears to be "tilted" a bit.... is this because of my projection, or is
there another reason for it?
(http://solo.veritime.com/cgi-bin/mapserv40.exe?map=c:/program+files/apache+group/apache2/htdocs/map/map.map&mode=browse)

How do I determine the proper extents?   I would like to make my map of
michigan fill the entire viewing area, but as I've tried changing the
extents it just shifts the map around without "enlarging".    When I used
the ogrinfo program to try to get the extents , it gave me numbers that
looked like longitude and latitude values rather than "meters" like the
extents I was using were using (I basically modified one of the tutorial
files to get my own map and started with the extents they had used).

If extents are in "meters"... what does that mean?   Where are you measuring
from?   "meters" only gives a size, not a location like longitude/latitude
would give so I'm not exactly sure what it means to express the extents in
"meters".

Sorry to post so many newbie type questions to this list where I see so many
questions that are much more advanced but hopefully I can get up this
learning curve as quickly as possible :)

Thanks in advance,
Jeff