10. ArcGIS® Renderer and Symbol Support

ArcGIS® offers a large variety of layer renderers and symbol types. The following section provides an overview of the renderers that Bridge supports and the possible limitations of the style conversion to Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) files. Bridge has been optimized for GeoServer and supports some of the SLD extensions that are available, like dynamic symbolizers and chart renderers.

The GeoServer SLD extensions that Bridge supports offer a rich styling experience, but they cannot guarantee and exact match to the ArcGIS Desktop® symbology. GeoServer SLD extensions are continuously being improved, but there are some limitations. One of them is that fonts used in layer symbols configured in ArcGIS Desktop® are not necessarily available on the GeoServer map server. The SLD engine maps a set of Esri® default font symbols to Webdings and Wingdings font symbols, but some symbols may not have been mapped.

In the following paragraphs, an overview is provided of all the renderers that Bridge supports.

Feature Layers

Feature Layer Renderers

Renderer	Supported
Features
Single Symbol
Categories
Unique values
Unique values, many fields
Match to symbols in a style	[1]
Quantities
Graduated colors
Graduated symbols
Proportional symbols
Dot density	[2]
Charts [3]
Pie
Bar/Column
Stacked
Multiple attributes
Quantity by category

[1]

Default Single Symbol renderer is used

[2]

The symbols are processed, but only the background color is used to create the fill.

[3]

Only for GeoServer SLD. The Chart API in GeoServer must be installed.

Point Symbols

Symbol type	Supported
Character marker symbol	[4]
Simple Marker symbol	[5]
Picture Marker Symbol	[6]
Arrow Marker Symbol	[7]

[4]

The font (True Type Font) should be available to GeoServer

[5]

Supported SLD markers: Circle, Square, Cross and X. The Diamond is mapped to circle

[6]

Supported from GeoServer version 2.8 and higher, supported for MapServer 6.0.0 and higher

[7]

These are mapped to an arrow symbol

Line Symbols

Symbol type	Supported
Cartographic line symbol
Hash line symbol
Marker line symbol
Picture line symbol	[8]
Simple line symbol

[8]

Supported from GeoServer version 2.8 and higher, supported for MapServer 6.0.0 and higher

Polygon Symbols

Symbol type	Supported
Line fill symbol
Marker fill symbol
Picture fill symbol	[9]
Simple fill symbol

[9]

Supported from GeoServer version 2.8 and higher, supported for MapServer 6.0.0 and higher

Labeling

Symbol type	Supported
Halo
Multiple fields labeling	[10]
Rotation

[10]

Only string concatanation expressions supported like: [CITY_NAME] + "(" + [STATE_NAME] + "")" No programming expressions supported.

Raster Layers

Raster Layer Renderers

Symbol type	Supported
Unique values
Classified
Stretched
Color map
Discrete color