Table of Contents for

Web Mapping Illustrated

Creates a graphic image of a legend based on the symbols used to draw layers specified in a map file.

Produces a graphic image of a scalebar based on the options in a map file, using the map extent as set in the map file.

Produces a map image based on a map file. Map extents and desired layers can be set. The options are robust enough that a simple desktop custom application could use this tool to create maps. Similar to shp2pdf , which outputs a PDF rather than just an image.

Produces an output PDF file that includes a map based on the input map file. This requires that MapServer was compiled with PDF support and has similar syntax as shp2img.

Adds an index (quad-tree based) to a shapefile that can improve performance when creating maps from large shapefiles. More information about the different options can be obtained from the mailing list archives or online documentation, but are outside the scope of this chapter.

Creates an overview shapefile that points to the location of individual files and their extent rectangles. This output shapefile can be used by MapServer to reference a large number of shapefiles (or other support data formats) that are in multiple pieces. This is helpful because you don’t have to append them all together or add dozens of layers in the map file. Instead, the tile index tells MapServer what layers are available and where they are geographically. It is more efficient because the extent rectangles are used as an index to find only those tiles of interest within the current map extent. It is recommended to also run shptree on the index that you create. ogrtindex and gdaltindex , part of the GDAL/OGR packages, are similar. These are highly recommended because they can index more than just shapefiles.

Sorts a shapefile using a field in the table, rearranging the physical order of features in the file. This can be helpful when order is important for display or query optimization.