GeoMoose 2.6 Release

Mapbook Changes

Frightening as they may be there is a subtle mapbook change:

  • status was attributed to the Catalog in versions 2.0-2.4. This was moved to the map-source’s <layer> entry. There are some academic and implementation reasons for this.

  • <configuration>’s <param> now MUST be delineated by “.” if defining or redefining a sub-member. The following was once valid:

    <param name="zoomtos['Jump To:']">

    It is no longer, don’t do it, you will only hurt yourself.

  • mapserver_url and mapfile_root are not required in the mapbook any longer.

  • Default sketch color parameters used to be configured like:

    <param name="drawing_tools.default_fill">red</param>
<param name="drawing_tools.default_stroke">yellow</param>
<param name="drawing_tools.default_opacity">1</param>

    which no longer does anything. Now default sketch colors are configured with:

    <attribute name="line_color" type="color" default-value="#ff0000" label="Stroke Color:"/>
<attribute name="fill_color" type="color" default-value="#ff0000" label="Fill Color:"/>
<attribute name="label_only" type="checkbox" default-value="false" label="Only show label in print?"/>

  • Not actually a mapbook change, but previous uses of <layer name="all"/> may not work without modifying your .map files. See also Why doesn’t layers=all work anymore?

  • <map-source/> changes

    “/” is no longer allowed in map-source names: E.g. <map-source name="/asdf/1234"> needs to become something like <map-source name="asdf_1234">.

    For WMS sources, <param name="FORMAT" value="image/jpeg"/> may be needed where only <param name="TRANSPARENT" value="false"/> was required before for imagery layers.

  • Catalog groups now default to expand="true", in 2.4 they defaulted to expand="false".

Deprecation Notices

  • The ScaleLine is no longer honored by configuration. You’ll need to include the ScaleLine.js Extension.

  • Client-side raster reprojection: This has never worked well and is really only used to create Web Mercator support on servers that don’t natively provide it. There are simply better tools for this. Please see TileCache, MapProxy, or configure MapServer as a WMS client.

  • The “cycle” tool has been removed from the catalog.

  • Custom tabs are now implemented completely differently. Please see extensions/CustomTab.js for an example of what the code for a custom tab looks like. The demos are configured to display a custom tab by default.

  • IE6 compatibility is no longer tested nor promised. Transparent GIFs are being dropped in favor of PNGs. IE6 hates PNGs.

  • CSS control of Toolbar-Tool labels. Please “enhancements.”

  • The help attribute of the layers have been deprecated. This was mostly redundant with the metadata attribute.

Enhancements

  • New integration with Dojo

  • New configuration parameter: flashy_bits will toggle on/off animation effects added to 2.6.

  • It was once necessary to do some reasonably serious CSS hacking to turn on or off the labels for a particular tool in the toolbar. Now, it’s much easier. Simply set the show-label attribute to true or false in the Mapbook. Example:

    <!-- with a label on -->
<tool title="Zoom In" show-label="false" ... />
<!-- with a label off -->
<tool title="Zoom In" show-label="false" ... />

The default behavior can changed by setting the configuration parameter toolbar.show_labels to either true or false.

  • Drawers now work like popup menus. They now have their own title and icon-class attributes.

  • Setting a custom icon in the toolbar. This is another point of pain that required much CSS hacking. Now, define the icon class in any of your included CSS files and tell the tool to use that class. Example:

    <tool title="Zoom In"  icon-class="my_zoomin_icon" ... />

  • Static-legends are now properly supported. The mapbook syntax is as follows:

    <catalog>
 ... snip ...
    <layer ...>
            <legend>/url/to/legend.png</legend>
    </layer>
 ... snip ...
</catalog>

Configuration Changes

There is now a local_settings.ini file in the conf/ directory. An SVN checkout will not feature this file. It is up to the installer to create. For MS4W installs, simply copy ms4w_local_settings.ini to local_settings.ini.

Also, users should no longer edit settings.ini, it can be considered the default settings. Any setting placed in local_settings.ini will overwrite the one in settings.ini.

Why doesn’t layers=all work anymore?

Changing to GeoMOOSE 2.6 breaks the <layer name="all"/> usage in mapbook.xml and gives me this error:

<ServiceException code="LayerNotDefined">
msWMSLoadGetMapParams(): WMS server error. Invalid layer(s) given in the LAYERS parameter.
</ServiceException>

This is due to changing the default type to WMS rather than MapServer. The same thing can still be achieved, the .map files just need a little revision. This is covered some in this thread and referenced ticket. For the record, here is what bobb wrote:

Johan, I don’t think that layers=all is a valid WMS call parameter … A work around is mentioned in here related to GROUPS in the mapfile. http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/1603 -bobb