Default symbol changes - documentation

[havatv]

There has been some questions on the mail lists recently that has to do with defaults for rendering. Here are some issues - I guess that they are documentation issues (but they may also be bugs).

I have tested AGG PNG and (Cairo) PDF output.

While documentation for STYLE-> SYMBOL seems to reflect current behaviour, the documentation for CLASS->SYMBOL says that:

Default is 0, which results in a single pixel, single width line, or solid
polygon fill, depending on layer type.

The documenation of STYLE and CLASS COLOR should be updated to state what the "default" is. Current Mapserver behaviour seems to be that if no colour is specified for STYLE or CLASS, nothing will be drawn for most of the symbol types except pixmap (I have tested vector, ellipse and truetype).

I am also wondering if the SYMBOL TYPE "simple" is still around. It seems to have been removed. I have tried to use it, and can't seem to make it work (I have testet with a point layer).

Before I start updating documentation, it would be good if someone could confirm that that these are documentation issues and not bugs.

[tbonfort]

@havatv ,

I would put class->style, class->color, class->size ,etc... as deprecated, as they are here for backwards compatibilty (they are translated into their STYLE equivalents). they should be moved into an explicit style block.

For style->color, it is correct that a style with no color will not be rendered apart for pixmap symbols (and SVG symbols also in 6.2)

type simple for symbols is unused, and is equivalent to setting no style->symbol. it can be marked as deprecated with a note that pattern, gap?, linecap, etc... have been moved to STYLE.

thanks,
thomas

[havatv]

OK. I will try to improve the documentation.
@tbonfort , would you like this to be done in the 6.0 branch?

[tbonfort]

@havatv I'd say only 6.2, 6.0 will be put offline/archived pretty soon. thanks.

[havatv]

I did the commit, but did a cut and paste error with the issue number. Sorry about that. The commit is:
MapServer/MapServer-documentation@83093dc

In the commit, I also removed and deprecated a number of deprecated parameters / keywords, and did som other changes:

MAP: Removed SCALE

LAYER: Removed LABELMAXSCALE, LABELMINSCALE, MAXSCALE, MINSCALE, SYMBOLSCALE

SYMBOL: Removed GAP, LINECAP, LINEJOIN, LINEMAXJOINSIZE, PATTERN, STYLE, TYPE->simple. Included a note that line styling had been moved to CLASS->STYLE.

CLASS: Removed MAXSCALE, MINSCALE. Marked the following as deprecated: BACKGROUNDCOLOR, COLOR, MAXSIZE, MINSIZE, OUTLINECOLOR, SIZE, SYMBOL (these have all been moved to STYLE). Removed the comment at the bottom on stacked symbols.

STYLE: Removed SIZEITEM.

[havatv]

@tbonfort and @sdlime , could you check if the documentation changes are OK. I don't have the full picture...

[sdlime]

Is a compiled version (e.g. web page) some place for review or is it best to work with the diff? --Steve

[havatv]

@sdlime , it will be better to work with the diff. It is not that much, and I have tried to mention all the significant changes in the comment above).

[tbonfort]

@havatv I'm fine with the changes. They are a bit radical but it's a good thing we're removing this legacy syntax from the main docs.