[OSM-talk] Where to place OSM-WMS tutorial?

[Jukka Rahkonen]

Hi,

I managed to get my Mapserver to serve OSM data through WMS by following the
instructions by Thomas Bonfort (see
http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/RenderingOsmData).
I placed the result of my first trial to
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:OSM_with_mapserver_3.jpg.

I am considering to write detailed instructions for those who have never before
installed or used Mapserver about how to set up a similar WMS service but I do
not know where to put the tutorial.  Any suggestions?  Users should have a
possibility to download a ready made Mapserver mapfile (it is plain text) from
that place so they could start making maps with default styles immediately.

There is nothing wrong in the existing OSM tile based rendering and serving
systems but I believe there is also room and need for a more flexible on-demand
rendering through WMS. WMS, if used without tilecache system, tends to be ten or
more times slower than tileservers, but WMS does also have some advantages like
layer control, reprojection on-the-fly, printing large maps with 5000 by 5000
pixels or more, direct use in GIS programs (or JOSM), output to many file
formats including GeoTIFF etc.