The MapServer team announces the release of MapServer 5.0. Perhaps the most important new feature in this release is support for map rendering using the Anti-grain Geometry (AGG) graphics library (www.antigrain.com). AGG brings high quality 2-D rendering capabilities to MapServer that will allow users to create maps with vastly improved cartographic quality. Equally important is that using AGG results in a minimal reduction in performance. All symbology supported by the default GD (www.libgd.org) graphics library are also supported using AGG. These features are aimed at bringing high-end cartography to on-demand web mapping.

This new version also includes dozens of small bug fixes, enhancements and performance improvements. Among the new features are: style and label attribute attribute binding; lookup table-based raster color correction; dynamic charting (pie and bar); explicit label prioritizing;
enhanced debugging and logging; dynamic allocation for layers, classes, styles and symbols; improved memory management and garbage collection for MapScript; numerous improvements to OGC specification support, and lots more.

The source code release is available at the usual location on the MapServer site:

   http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/download/current