Using circle symbol to draw lines thicker than one pixel

[dgadoury@…]

I recently commented on a question to the list about the need to use a circle
(or other) symbol to draw a line thicker than one pixel. The user didn't know
about this requirement and was confused about how to do it, but a list member
answered the question quickly. It was suggested that I put the text of my
message into a bug, so here it is:
______________
I have observed that this seems to be one of the most frequently asked questions
on the list, aside from compilation / installation issues. It seems to trip up
new users very frequently and I think its fair to say that that is because
setting a circle symbol for a line is, at first glance, counterintuitive.

Has there ever been any consideration of the idea of making a circle symbol
default when setting the thickness property of lines? That would make things
more intuitive and more in line with the way other web mapping, GIS, and
graphics packages work. In fact, Mapserver is the only application I've ever
used in which you need to apply a symbol to a line to adjust its thickness. I
guess there is a dependency on the symbol file, but could things be done in such
a way that a circle symbol is available in the actual core of Mapserver and is
used by default? Users could still override this if they choose to use a
different symbol, but if not they get the circle symbol and only have to use
size to define the thickness of a line.

[sdlime]

I've often thought about creating a default 'circle' symbol. In theory it's a 
pretty simple change but it touches potentially a lot of code. Since there's a 
well know alternative it's not been a high priority. I wouldn't say it's that 
unique. Many raster packages, for example photoshop, tie line width to a 
particular brush. Also, as the cartographic line code becomes more advanced 
we'd probably want to move to that as a default symbol for lines rather than 
using a brush. 

Steve

[tbonfort]

circle symbol isn't needed in 6.0, the style width defines the width of the line. GD actually transforms this in a circle brush, but that is transparent for the user.