<font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif">Hi Jeff</font><div><br></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif">I may well try that! The trouble is I have a stack of attributes in a Access db which I was joining onto the KML data. I need the complete dataset for an ArcGIS Server data service anyway so a shapefile seemed to be a good way to join it all and assist with that (will end up in SDE) and my mapfile dataset too. I had already read the page you mentioned and all is in place (I am using the MS4W PHP/mapscript set-up on IIS) and my original ISO flavoured version labels up nicely - it just breaks some of the query functionality (though it shouldn't - which is why I wonder if some of the characters are badly formed)!</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif">Thanks for the advice</font></div><div><br></div><div>Chris </div><div><div><blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Hi Chris,<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">My quick thoughts are:<br>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">- use ogr2ogr (the GDAL/OGR library) to do your conversion from KML to<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">shp (if you are on Windows, the MS4W product can help you with that<br>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml?page=downloads.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(66, 99, 171); ">http://www.maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml?page=downloads.html</a>)<br>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">- another option is to use the KML in its native format with MapServer<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">(<a href="http://www.mapserver.org/input/vector/kml.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(66, 99, 171); ">http://www.mapserver.org/input/vector/kml.html</a>), which is also possible<br>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">with MS4W<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">- if by "application" problems you mean map label problems with encoded<br>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">characters, this howto should help you:<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.mapserver.org/mapfile/labelencoding.html" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(66, 99, 171); ">http://www.mapserver.org/mapfile/labelencoding.html<br>
</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Hope that helps.<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">-jeff</span></blockquote>
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