[mapserver-users] Graticule and Map Frame strategies

[Brent Fraser]

Roger,

  I asked a similar question last year (http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2007-September/002349.html).

  Landon Blake and I (and others) came to the conclusion that the answer was to create a "map surround" library suitable for wrapping as a plug-in to various generic publishing/compositing applications (such as Inkscape, Scribus, ReportLab, etc) and possibly some desktop GIS apps (uDig, Quantum, gvSig, OpenJump, etc).

  While I still believe that's the ultimate answer, I find myself going back to Mapserver's mappdf.c (and mapgraticule.c, etc), and speculating on enhancements to give Mapserver the capability right out of the box.

Brent Fraser
GeoAnalytic Inc.


Roger André wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I'm curious what options have been explored to create tick marks, 
> graticules and outside-of-map symbology?  I'm currently investigating 
> the use of Matplotlib as a compositer to draw on top of a 
> Mapserver-generated image, and while I think this will give nice looking 
> results, the speed of the process is quite slow, probably because 
> Matplotlib deconstructs the Mapserver image with PIL and works with it 
> as a numpy array. 
> 
> I'm interested in hearing about any other tools that allow for the same 
> sort of "drawing on top of" strategy, preferrably ones with API's.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Roger