CGI or Mapscript

[percy]

Steve, I'd be interested in the PHP legend builder.
Thanks,
Percy

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Date:    Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:30:27 -0500
From:    Steve Lime <Steve.Lime at DNR.STATE.MN.US>
Subject: Re: CGI or Mapscript

The MapServer CGI can be viewed as one possible web application written
in on top
of the MapServer C code. MapScript is a wrapper around that C code and
allows you
to do everything the MapServer CGI can do plus just about anything you
can dream
up.

For example, with MapServer CGI you can't create 10 maps at once and
roll them into
an animated gif. You could with MapScript.

Another example, consider the ugly reference map in this page:

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/wmas/detail_report.html?map=COMPASS_MAPFILE&mode=itemquery&qlayer=bdry_adwma2py3_query&qitem=uniqueid&qstring=WMA0060402

You can't composite 2 MapServer generated maps with the CGI. You can
with MapScript.

Anyway, there are lots of DHTML/js frameworks out there. One that sits
atop basically
just the MapServer CGI is called dbox. You can learn more at:

   http://maps.dnr.state.mn.us/tools/dbox

It has a legend builder that requires MapScript (I have a PHP version
of the legend
building script if anyone cares), but certainly can be used without
it.