MapServer Workbench

Tom Poindexter 
Talus Technologies, Inc.
tpoindex@nyx.net
http://www.nyx.nyx/~tpoindex

MapServer Workbench Copyright 2000 Tom Poindexter
Portions Copyright:
    Peter deVoil, 1999
    Michael Kraus, 1999
    John Reekie, 1998
    George Howlett, 1999


See LICENSE.TXT for copyright and licensing terms.
Released under LGPL.

Release 0.3  
January 5, 2001


INTRODUCTION

MapServer Workbench is a suite of tools designed to develop MapServer 
mapping applications.  The suite is written in Tcl/Tk, and requires the
Mapscript Tcl interface distributed with Mapserver.

MapServer Workbench includes:

msappwiz.tcl    - MapServer App Wizard, an interactive map application
                  building tool.  The Wizard builds minimal working map 
                  applications.  MapServer Editor should be used to finish
                  map details such as map extents, min and max layer and label
                  attributes, etc.

msedit.tcl      - MapServer Editor, a tree-structured mapfile editor.  Reads
                  existing mapfiles, applies some data type edit rules, and 
                  writes out mapfiles.  Uses the Mapscript interface to 
                  test mapfiles with the official MapServer mapfile parsing
                  routines.

msexplorer.tcl	- MapServer Explorer, an interactive map display and 
                  query tool.  Based on Peter deVoil's maptcl-demo.tcl, 
                  changed to use mapscript 3.3.012+ Tcl interface, and 
                  enhanced to work in the MapServer Workbench suite.

msshapex.tcl    - MapServer Shape Explorer, a utility to view Shapefile
                  information.  A shapefile's related .dbf attribute file
                  can be browsed.  Shapefiles can also be viewed through use
                  of MapServer Explorer.

<yourtool>      - MapServer Workbench welcomes your contributions!  Don't 
                  consider these tools as the only tools for MapServer.


NOTES

Various tools in the Workbench are designed to interact, e.g., while editing
with msedit.tcl, you can start the MapServer Explorer to view the
current map.

MapServer Workbench uses several Tcl packages beside the Mapscript 
interface.  Several tools make use of "msTclObjs", a Tcl package providing
independent MapServer map objects.  msTclObjs can build map object trees,
parse existing mapfiles, write map objects to a file, and more.  
msTclObjs itself uses "obstcl", a lightweight object oriented extension for Tcl.
"mkWidgets" is utilized for additional Tk widgets.  Each of these packages are 
Tcl-only extensions, and do not require other compiled code to run.

MapServer Workbench was written and tested with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2,
under Linux.  The Workbench can run in Windows, provided you have installed
Tcl/Tk and Mapscript/Tcl for Windows.


REQUIREMENTS

Tcl/Tk 8.3.2 or greater is required.  If you don't have Tcl/Tk, get it at
	http://tcl.sourceforge.net

Mapserver 3.4 or greater is required.  3.4 is available in the CVS section,
or download the 'nightly' CVS build.  Get MapServer at:
	http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu

Mapserver Mapscript Tcl interface is required.  Mapscript is a scripting 
langauage extension for Mapserver, and builds interfaces for Tcl, Perl, and
others.  The Mapscript Tcl interface is required.  After building MapServer,
change to the mapscript/tcl directory, and build and install the Tcl interface.
For Windows users, a pre-built DLL is provided.  

See the Mapscript/Tcl README for more information.


INSTALLATION

UNIX: Run 'install.sh'.

The 'install.sh' shell script finds a working wish executable, and asks
for an installation directory.  install.sh then modifies each program to
use the proper wish executable, and makes links to the programs in the
installation directory.

A tiny Makefile is also included for those lapses of habit.  'make install'
just runs install.sh.

For testing, I recommend that you unpack MapServer Workbench in your
mapserver/mapscript/tcl directory.  That way, you can run the tools without
first installing Mapscript Tcl, since the tools look in the immediate 
parent directory for the Mapscript Tcl interface, in addition to standard
Tcl install directories.

WINDOWS:  Click on 'setup.tcl'

The install script simply adds a new program group to your 'Start' menu,
and adds each of the MapServer Workbench tools to it.  You should unpack the
msworkbench.tar.gz archive into a directory you want to keep around.  

You can use the popular 'WinZip' program to unpack tar.gz files on Windows
(http://www.winzip.com), or use gunzip and tar from the Cygwin tools
(http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/).




OTHER NOTES

mkWidgets:
mkWidgets was written by Michael Kraus.  Michael's Tcl pages are at:
	http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mmg_kraus/TclCornr.htm

I modified the pane widget to start at 30/70 frame dimensions for msedit.tcl.

obstcl:
obstcl was written by John Reekie, and enhanced by me. the original page is at:
	http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Ejohnr/code/obstcl/

Note that John's pages document an eariler version of obstcl.
The use of obstcl will likely be replaced with [incr Tcl] in a future release,
when [incr Tcl] becomes a core Tcl feature. (slated for Tcl 8.4+)  Until then,
obstcl provides a nice object oriented package in a few hundred lines of Tcl.


-finis-