You can also use an open source tool like Quantum GIS (qgis.org) to
generate random colors like you are used to in Arc, then export the
mapfile from QGIS and copy just the class expressions into your own
mapfile that you've already been working with.
You might need to tweak the expression syntax to work with PostGIS
(depending on whether you point QGIS at a shapefile or a postgis table),
but this can still save a lot of hand coding of classes.
Percy
Pascal Ehlert wrote:
That's great, thank you for the example.. Makes it a lot clearer :)
As an example I am usually using something similar like this:
LAYER
NAME "Countries"
GROUP "Africa"
TYPE POLYGON
STATUS ON
CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
CONNECTION "user=me password=none dbname=africa host=localhost"
DATA "the_geom from (select the_geom, countryname, area, gid from
africa_countries) as temp using unique gid using SRID=4326"
# SRID 4326 is when using decimal degrees, replace with the correct
SRID
for your data CLASSITEM "countryname"
CLASS
NAME "EGYPT"
COLOR 153 204 143
EXPRESSION ([countryname]=EGYPT)
END
CLASS
NAME "LYBIA"
COLOR 252 141 50
EXPRESSION ([countryname]=LYBIA)
END
CLASS
NAME "MADAGASCAR"
COLOR 255 190 232
EXPRESSION ([countryname]=MADAGASCAR)
END
END
Cheers
Karsten
--
David Percy
Geospatial Data Manager
Geology Department
Portland State University
http://gisgeek.pdx.edu
503-725-3373
