MS4W applications

[Julien-Samuel Lacroix]

Hello,
I will try to help you to sort this out.

First there's MapServer. This the engine under all those applications. 
MapServer is a server application that takes your data and create a map 
image. To be able to do this, MapServer has a configuration file called 
mapfile. To understand the mapfile, you can take the MapServer tutorial:
http://hypnos.cbs.umn.edu/tutorial/

To build more complex applications, MapServer has interface called 
MapScript. MapScript is simply the MapServer functionality integrated in 
the programming language of your choice. See the doc for more details:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/doc.html

After that, MapLab, Chameleon and GMap are three application using 
MapServer and PHP/MapScript.

GMap is an example application using PHP/MapScript. To understand how it 
works, you will have to look in the code (gmap75.php) and in the mapfile 
(gmap75.map).

MapLab is a software to easily build a MapFile for MapServer. Optionally 
you can build an application like GMap using GMapFactory, but this is 
limited. See the website for more details:
http://www.maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml

Chameleon is a software to easily build advanced applications using 
MapServer and PHP/MapScript. It's a templating system so the use is 
simple. You provide it a mapfile and a template and it will give you a 
fully functional application. The template is a simple HTML page with 
special tags in it. This not really a tool to create a mapfile, but you 
can play with dynamic layers, creating and manipulating them. See the 
website for more details:
http://chameleon.maptools.org/index.phtml

Thanks
Julien

On 10/12/2005 07:57 AM, Carlos Ruiz wrote:
> Hello, I am Carlos Ruiz Luna, studying at the School
> of Engineers of the Canton of Vaud (EIVD) in
> Switzerland.
> I would like to create a website with isochronous
> charts by using the data bases of TeléAtlas (Shape
> format). I installed the OpenSource software MS4W
> v1.2.2 but I don't know wich application I must
> choose:
> 1) Is Chameleon only a set of scripts that i have to
> added to MapLap application? or this is an application
> who allows me to create layers like Maplab?
> 2) It seems that Gmap is an application similar to an
> application obtained with Maplab (GmapFactory) but I
> don't know how to use my own data base and layers.
> 
> Could you tell me how to create the isochron function
> by my own in PHP Mapscript?
>  
> Thanks in advance for your answers, and best regards.
> Carlos Ruiz Luna
> 
> 
> 		
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Julien-Samuel Lacroix            jlacroix at dmsolutions.ca
DM Solutions Group               http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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