Mapnik 0.7.0

The 0.7.0 release targets stability and usability of the Mapnik Core and brings notable advancements to the Datasource Plugins.

See the Release page: wiki:Release0.7.0

See the CHANGELOG: source:tags/release-0.7.0/CHANGELOG

Usage, either via Python or XML stylesheets should be fully compatible with the 0.6.x series.

Nevertheless, this release brings improvements and fixes to the C++ core that warrant a major release and new a ABI version.

Plugins

• Addition of GDAL raster overviews - You can now rapidly read large raster datasets (#54)
  • Turn multiple geotiffs into a Bigtiff and build overviews with gdaladdo then read with the GDAL plugin
  • Thanks Alberto and Craig for the initial patches and Dražen for great testing

• Huge set of improvements to PostGIS Plugin
  • The PostGIS plugin now supports custom placement of the BBOX query
  • It is is able to skip initialization queries if you supply the 'geometry_field','srid',or 'extent'
  • Errors are now thrown for queries with invalid syntax - should help in debugging complex SQL
  • Thanks Migurski, Lennard, Avar and more for great ideas and testing
  • Thanks Robert for awesome support and patches
  • #242, #260, #363, #376, #384, #393, #414, #415, #426, #433, #434, #449, #456

Python

• Additional support for python pickling (near complete) (#345)
  • Map pickling still needs some refinement, but most objects are nicely pickleable now
  • Thanks Artem for great improvements using templating

• Improvements to Python linking on Mac OSX (#380)
  • Smarter default linking to the right Python framework (helps if multiple versions exist like on Snow Leopard + python 2.6)

• Improvements to python docstrings
  • Thanks Igor for contributing many more docstrings!

Core

• Completed adding full support for PPC/ Big endian systems (#357)
  • Ability to read binary data was completed for 0.6.1, but color support needed work and is now finished

• Large extension to TextSymbolizer functionality by David Eastcott (r1341) and Jochen (r1254)

• New support for semitransparency in png256 output (#477)

• New 'gamma' attribute on PolygonSymbolizer to allow for seamless polygon edges (#428)

• Support for writing map xml to string (#396)
  • Call mapnik.save_map_to_string(m) to send a map to an xml stream

• Support for relative paths in xml loaded from string(#440)
  • Works with libxml2 entities even! Thanks Dražen!
  • Tested with the latest OSM stylesheet.

• Variety of bug and usability fixes (#392,#436,#448,#242,#301,#402,#413)