[ms4w-users] maplab updates?

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Matt,

Excellent question, and one I'm sure is quite common among maplab and
mapserver users.

There is an official response posted for this
(http://www.maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml?page=RELEASE_maplab_2.2.1.html).

The problem, and i apologize before i attempt to answer because i am not
a low-level maplab developer, has to do with the way PHP 
serializes/unserializes variables in its recent releases, which the 
maplab code relies on.  The maplab developers examined this for a while, 
they discovered that it is not a trivial solution, and we still don't 
have the right resources/time/funding to allocate for this.

We realize there is a huge need for a "MapLab" with MapServer - a easy 
mapfile/application development environment, and we're constantly 
looking for the right opportunity/funding to do so...anyone out there 
want to help??? :)

Until that day comes, you could use the recommended configuration and 
use MapLab for its nice mapfile preview, and to quickly develop a 
working phpmapscript application.  (note that Chameleon is recommended 
for application development now however).

But if that is not an option (using older php and ms4w versions on your 
server), there are some other projects that might interest you:

   * Quantum GIS (http://qgis.org/) has a 'File/Export as MapServer 
mapfile' utility, that is still in development, but probably just needs 
some resources/funding to complete

   * there are utilities for mapfile export from Arc:
        * ArcView 3.x - GIX http://gix.sourceforge.net/
                      - Avein! http://sourceforge.net/projects/avein/
        * ArcGIS      - Amein! http://sourceforge.net/projects/avein/

    (there might be others of course)

I hope this sheds some light on the situation.  MapLab-ms4w is still a 
popular download, so users (like myself) really need something (as you 
know as well).

cya.


jeff


Matt Wilkie wrote:
> Hi, maplab looks like it's quite far behind, needing a version of ms4w 2 
> versions back from current.  Is the problem with php intractable or is 
> it just that maplab has been superceded by other tools? (my real goal at 
> the moment is to find the best method of creating new .map files).
> 
> thanks,
> 
> -- 
> -matt
> 

-- 
Jeff McKenna
DM Solutions Group Inc.
http://www.dmsolutions.ca