Newbie feedback
Hello all, we newly installed Mapserver as ms4w installation on windows; and we are very satisfied. We got up and running very fast, even though we are not fluent in the techniques used (in Partiucar, Apache webserver). However, I want to share a few small points that caused unnecessary problems. 1. A suggestion where in the directory structure to put the mapfiles would be appreciated. If there are different meanings, give two or three scenarios. Also include the looks of the URL reference to the mapfile. 2. Why not enclose a small working example with one simplest possible mapfile and one shapefile set? And perhaps another more advanced mapfile with some common techniques exposed? 3. Font handling caused me much problems. As it is a windows installation, it could be at least a insall note / readme describing where to search for the .ttf files. The Mapserver documentation doesn't say anything about Windows, and in Windows you need not be very aware of where to find the font files, so it took some time to find out. It appears that the documentation is not very clear either; I hade to create a fontset file and refer to it to get it work; the documentation hints that font references could be written in the fontset clause, but I didn't manage. 4. The default font handling (bitmap) was confusing as it appears to be ascii based, where the true type font appears to be Unicode/UTF-8 based. When doing the correct 'encoding', the output was silly until I managed to handel the true type fonts correctly. 5. I would suggest more examples in the documentation, especially around mapfile editing. In examles you would also get punctuation issues and such I think that was my most important points I think. Kind regards Lars Westerlind
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