Ability to specifiy format output for raster output

[assefa]

Initial e-mail discussion from bfraser@…

Back in 2005 I challenged one of our new engineers to create a 34 inch by 44 inch PDF map (with a graticule!) of a satellite image using Mapserver (v4.6). There were several problems, the most serious in mappdf.c which uses an 8-bit GD library image format restricting the images inserted into the PDF to 8 bit only (although just prior to insertion they're converted to JPEG, a 24-bit format!).

One of the other problems was memory usage. Mapserver creates two or three copies of the image when rendering it to PDF (and at 300 dpi an RGB image of that size can be 500 mb). But if your format is smaller than 34 x 44, it may not be a problem.

[springmeyer]

Reference to original email: ​http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2008-April/055593.html

[assefa]

This is not an issue any more. MapServer 6.0 used Cairo for PDF output.