Documentation: Symbol: relation between GAP and POINTS to obtain a certain distance is not clearly documented

[ochriste]

The documentation is a bit vague about how to calculate correctly which values to use for GAP and ellipse's POINTS to obtain a defined spacing between dots with a specified style SIZE.

Increasing the style SIZE increase the distance between dots. Increasing the symbol GAP increase the distance between dots. Increasing the symbol POINTS decrease the distance between dots.

empirically I have been able to estimate the formula to something like this: distance = (GAP * SIZE * 0.75) / POINTS

for example, with: ... style

symbol "dots" size 9

end ... symbol

name dots type ellipse points 7 7 end gap 15 FILLED TRUE

end ... we get distance = ( 15 * 9 * 0.75 ) / 7 = 14.46... which seem to correspond to the result obtained practically.

also see thread ​http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapserver-users/2010-January/064160.html

[ochriste]

visual result of exemple used in bug description

[havatv]

This is better documented in the 6.0 documentation. Closing this as a documenation bug. Behaviour is another matter...