Hans,
When you are using ArcMap for doing the cartography the free extension called
“AmeiN! / ArcGIs 9 to UMN” can help you initially producing a mapfile faster ☺.
Download at http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=466044
Check http://umn.mapserver.ch/index_en.php for more tools for
creating map files.
If you want all data in Postgis you need to edit the data tag in your mapfile:
e.g.
Be aware that Postgis layers are very handy and super cool but usually will be
slightly slower performing ~ 10% than shape files !
Instead of a shape file e.g. like this
NAME "Country"
TYPE POLYGON
DATA "yourpath/mapdata/countries"
You need to include reference like this
NAME "Country"
TYPE POLYGON
CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
CONNECTION "user=youruser password=magicpassword dbname=yourbase
host=localhost"
DATA "the_geom from (select the_geom, name, area, gid from
countries_data) as temp using unique gid using SRID=4326"
(SRID needs to be adjusted to your projection and unique “gid” is needed)
Regarding performance read the hints at
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/mapfiletuning/?searchterm=optimize
Some more tips:
- Use the minscale and maxscale feature tags to display data at different scales
E.g. you might want a simplified roads layer with different symbols at small
scale (overview), but have several other more detailed roads layers that turn
on automatically showing refined symbology when the user zooms in.
You can do the same for lakes and rivers
e.g include in layer definition to show a layer between 1:200000 - 1:500000
MAXSCALE 500000
MINSCALE 200000
- take good care of labeling at different scales (labels are the salt and
pepper of your map!)
e.g. use true type fonts,
use Buffer and Mindistance to adjust how many labels show up on the map
LABEL
TYPE TRUETYPE
FONT "verdana"
ANGLE AUTO
PARTIALS FALSE
POSITION UC
SIZE 10
BUFFER 12
MINDISTANCE 250
COLOR 20 20 80
OUTLINECOLOR 200 200 180
END
- for symbols create your own set to have good looking ones , use composite
symbols , reference e.g. at
Symbols at http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/symbologyexchange_vector
- look at the REQUIRES and Labelrequires mapfile tag and use it to exclude
layers layers that should or should not be displayed with each other
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/mapfile/layer
Remember that a long mapfile slows down performance (all layers that are turned
off initially also do), however nice cartography requires more tags and layers
:)
Cheers
Karsten
________________________________________
From: Hans Castorp [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 01:04
Subject: Map tunning
Hi to all,
Until now all my mapserver projects only included serving raster cartography
without polyline or polygon layers, so all was very easy. No I am in front of a
project that requires a “good looking” cartography (or, like you say,
google-ish cartography), so it becomes harder and harder.
I think mapserver it’s quite easy for serving simple cartography but high
customization it’s resulting very hard to me, so I need some help. Is there any
tutorial or tool for helping with it?? I was making some trials with Mapstorer
but results are very poor.
P.S. My cartography is created using Arcgis and after exported to PostGis.
Thanks in advance.
Hans Castorp
