Drawing streets like google local

[Gregor Mosheh]

> I would like to give users the familiarity of common internet maps.
> Can anyone point me to a way to render lines similar to google or
> yahoo maps?

The basic trick is as follows: use 2 symbols with different colors, so you
get a thick line with an outline effect. Example:

    # plain old streets: medium grey outlines on a white fill.
    STYLE
      SYMBOL 'line_solid'
      COLOR 180 180 180
      SIZE 3
    END
    STYLE
      SYMBOL 'line_solid'
      COLOR 255 255 255
      SIZE 1
    END

Make several classes (highways, interstates, city roads) using whatever
classification criteria your data gives you. Then tweak the sizes and
colors, e.g. two shades of beige and sizes 5 and 3, two shades of darker
brown and sizes 4 and 6 for major city roads, ...

A great resource for colors is Visibone's color lab:
   http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/

I hope this helps.