[UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] antialiasing line features..

[Giorgio Plazzotta]

Title: MAPSERVER-USERS Digest - 24 Oct 2005 to 25 Oct 2005 (#2005-309)

Thanx Flavio to reopen a subject that I investigated more than 1 year ago and pushed me to re-check the situation with newer relases of Mapserver and GDAL. Though the Jpeg outputformat is much lighter than the Png24 I experienced a problem with  truetype point symbols. I don't know why but with the jpeg outputformat they are shown in a very poor quality. Instead using the same mapfile, just changing the outputformat to Png24, the truetype symbols are perfect. The Jpeg quality doesn't influence this behaviour, even if i set it to 100 it's the same. So if I want perfect symbols I have to set the outputformat to png24 but in this way the file is much bigger. Otherwise I have to renounce the truetype symbols and use only the other types of point symbols. Is this a limitation of the Gdal libraries? For what regards the line antialiasing I noticed, though not measuring it, that the performance is strongly affected by the use of a cartoline line symbol even if the outputformat is set to Jpeg. The antialiasing is an interesting feature and the desktop systems (ex. Manifold) that uses a good antialiasing engine really have a very attractive look but, depending of the project goals, this feature could be considered of secondary importance compared to performance, especially in case or many remote accesses and not so fast connections such as in my country.   Giorgio Plazzotta ________________________________ Saras Ricerche e Tecnologie Divisione Ricerche - Sezione Ambiente Trav.5° Strada ovest Macchiareddu C.P. 237 I-09032 Assemini (CA) - Italy 070-2464262