Make Line Types More Consistent Across Platform
This idea is the product of struggling with defining line symbology using ArcGIS Pro 2.9.6 and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6.1. The challenge was the inconsistency of display and the unintuitive experience I went through to figure it out. If these issues have been fixed in newer versions, I would happy to hear that. Below are the findings of my investigation and my recommendations.
In the ArcGIS Pro symbology editor, the pulldown menu for dash type is as follows:
I would qualitatively characterize the second to fourth line types as short dash, long dash, and dot. You might also think of the short dash as a dash. However, when you actually select the symbols and they are displayed on the map, the dashes get lengthened. The dot becomes a short dash; the short dash becomes a long dash; and the long dash becomes a very long dash. See below:
When you publish the map to ArcGIS Server as a dynamic map service, the actual symbology displayed in ArcGIS Pro is served up when you request map images. However, all three line types that use a dash effect above get mapped to esriSLSDash when you look at the layer renderer in the REST API. Therefore, if you add the layers individually as feature layers to the Map Viewer, they all look like shorter dashes.
I realized I had to edit the symbology in the Map Viewer to be able to get different line types again. I did it using the web interface and editing the JSON. I learned that esriSLSDash, esriSLSShortDash, and esriSLSLongDash all display as a shorter dash. Maybe that is a JavaScript 3.X API thing. At least, I accepted that for what it is. So, my options were down to esriSLSDash and esriSLSDot. I didn't want something as inconspicuous as a dotted line but I needed two different line types and those were my only options. I was not interested in any other mixture of dashes and dots.
It would have been nice if the dash type pulldown menu actually matched what you got on the map. Then, it would have been nice if the different dash effects were mapped to the right ArcGIS Server line types. I can see how there are an infinite number of dash templates that can be entered manually, but could you at least map the ones that match up with the pulldown menu to the right line types in ArcGIS Server or use some logic.
