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(readme.doc) MAPIT (v 1.3) Allison Software 166 Shady Lane Apollo, PA 15613 USA 412-727-2198 CompuServe 72600,1200 Product Description: MAPIT - Bringing detailed world mapping to your PC. MAPIT is an integrated world-wide mapping system of amazing detail which lets you create customized maps for work, school, or fun. Use MAPIT to: * Print detailed, professional-quality, customized maps. * Import maps into your word processing documents. * Record and track data. * Add your own customized detail: text, hidden text, figures, and line data. * Zoom to any level and navigate around the world. * Plot great circles - the shortest distance between any two points. * Measure distances in miles, kilometers, or nautical miles. * Calculate to/from azimuth bearing angles. * Plot range curves and calculate associated areas. * Save your private data in compact files for easy, efficient distribution and retention. * Do all of the above with 100 foot precision - ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. A powerful reference tool, MAPIT contains a wealth of information and is just plain fun to use. Insert or import lines to customize features. Mark locations with multiple copies of your own figures (simple line drawings). Document with MAPIT's seven stroked text fonts in any size at any angle. Use hidden text to hide a screen's-worth of data behind a small marker you can pop up with the click of a mouse. School age children will amaze their teachers and friends with the accurate maps of foreign countries and states they can plot from MAPIT's database. And your little ones will love to color-fill the oceans, lakes, islands, and countries imported into their favorite paint brush program from MAPIT The more serious user has a choice of exporting data in the colorful .PCX screen dump file format or in the ultra-detailed HP-GL/2 graphics plotting language format accepted by many laser printers and pen plotters. You can even merge this data into publication-quality compound (text and graphics) documents supported by modern word processors. MAPIT displays a true Mercator projection, the choice of navigators. Layout great circle tracks between multiple points totaling their distances in statute miles, nautical miles, or kilometers. Dynamically plot range curves up to half way around the world measuring the enclosed area as you go. MAPIT includes almost 6000 international cities and 19,000 US cities with their 1990 populations. Click on any city to pop up its size. The underlying vector-based geographic database consists of over 5 million points organized by coastlines, lakes, rivers, canals, reefs, salt flats, national boundaries, and US and Canadian state and provincial boundaries. Believe me, you'll find places in this database you never imagined existed. MAPIT comes network-ready for multi-user installations. The large read-only main database can be located on a shared disk for more efficient operations. If you are looking for more than just a pretty picture -- or perhaps need many different pretty pictures, let MAPIT be the end of your graphical quest. Home, school, or office, MAPIT can do the job! MAPIT, your electronic notepad on the world. Quick Start: MAPIT, as a compute and disk-intensive application, requires a fast IBM-compatible computer, 512KB RAM, an EGA or VGA display, and a MOUSE. Install a Mouse. MAPIT REQUIRES A MOUSE. Unless you have a mouse physically attached to your computer AND have installed its driver, you will be unable to operate MAPIT. You can exit MAPIT from the keyboard by entering <CTRL>Q. Install the mouse driver by issuing the following command at the command prompt. > "path"\MOUSE (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\MOUSE) where "path" is the path to the directory containing the mouse driver. Place this command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT so MOUSE is always available. Caution: Windows is smart and will show a mouse cursor without the mouse driver's being installed. If the cursor doesn't appear when you run MAPIT, <CTRL>Q out and try to edit a file with the standard DOS editor from the DOS prompt (EDIT README.DOC). If you don't have a mouse cursor in the editor, the driver isn't loaded. Try loading it from the DOS prompt as above, and if that works, add the same command near the end of your AUTOEXEC.BAT but before any call to WINdows. Install MAPIT. The shareware version of MAPIT is distributed as a one, two, or three disk set. The entire set must be loaded onto your hard drive before beginning. Insert the first MAPIT diskette into floppy drive A: (or B:) and enter > A:INSTALL The install program will ask where you want the MAPIT data stored (C:\MAPIT ?) and complete the installation for you. Run MAPIT. Run MAPIT with the shareware data by entering > MAPIT (or MAPIT DEMO) Each time MAPIT runs, it looks for the private database EXTENDED.MP3. If not found, it creates a zero length EXTENDED.MP3. To run MAPIT with the Columbus demo, copy COLUMBUS.MP3 over EXTENDED.MP3 before runing MAPIT. > COPY COLUMBUS.MP3 EXTENDED.MP3 > MAPIT You may also wish to print the text file COLUMBUS.DOC to have a hardcopy in front of you as you run the demo. Follow the instructions in Hidden Text 1 (Press Left Mouse button in triangle 1) to follow the Columbus demo and learn to use MAPIT. When you are finished with the Columbus demo, delete EXTENDED.MP3. In general, MAPIT is started from the command line by entering > MAPIT [main_mp3_data] [/extended=mp3_data_file] [/figure=figure_file] [/font=font_file] [/save=save_file] [/delete] where main_mp3_data - The primary .mp3 format data file opened read-only. Defaults to WORLD.MP3 if not specified. MAPIT looks for four other files at startup time: /extended=mp3_data_file - A private .mp3 format data file opened for update with user data or changes. If none exists, a zero length file is created. Defaults to EXTENDED.MP3 if not specified. /figure=figure_file - The standard figures file. Normally this file is user-created by FIGEDIT and contains the user's custom figures. Without it, figures won't be displayed. Defaults to STD.FIG if not specified. /font=font_file - The standard font file. Without it, stroked text doesn't work. Defaults to STD.FNT if not specified. /save=save_file - The file holding MAPIT's final state. Defaults to MAPIT.SAV if not specified. /delete - Allows the MAPIT menu selection EDIT/Copy & Delete to work by opening main_mp3_data for update. Enter MAPIT /? from the command line for a listing if you forget these options. You can abbreviate command line switches short of the point of ambiguity. /fig=x is the same as /figure=x, but /f=x will induce an error message listing the ambiguous possibilities as /figure and /font. Entering just a / is a sly way of forcing MAPIT to list all its command line switches. Using the Mouse There are two distinct ways to use the mouse. DRAGGING - Some selections (eg. Zoom by Corners) require depressing the left button to establish the starting corner or position and, WITH THE BUTTON STILL DEPRESSED, dragging the cursor to the second corner or position to be measured BEFORE RELEASING THE BUTTON. If you press and release at the same point when a drag is required, nothing happens. POINT & CLICK - Other activities, notably those requiring one-at-a-time point selections, look for the depression and release of the left mouse button without any intervening movement. Sometimes use of the RIGHT mouse button is required to signal the end of multiple point entry. Tuning Your System. MAPIT requires a properly tuned high performance computer. The most significant performance boost you can give is by using disk cache such as SMARTDRV which comes with DOS and WINDOWS. The disk cache must be of adequate size, at least 500K, if it is to be of any use. If when redrawing a portion of the world, you notice a lot of disk activity, your system will perform better with a larger disk cache. MAPIT's .mp3 data files are LARGE, but they are efficiently designed and already compact. Data compaction drivers such as DOUBLESPACE will NOT gain you appreciable space and may SLOW your disk system (by as much as one half). Do NOT place MAPIT's data files on compressed drives without first verify performance loss versus space savings for your hardware/software combination. MAPIT is designed to display graphics adequately without a math coprocessor. Stroked text, however, which can be oriented at any angle, is compute intensive and will respond positively to the addition of a math chip. Making Maps MAPIT supports a variety of methods of producing output which differ in quality and complexity. Direct Output The simplest method of generating output is to direct hard copy directly from the screen to your printer. GRAPHICS, a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident program) at the DOS command level, outputs a graphics screen when you press the Shift+Print Screen key combination. (You cannot be running under Windows when you do this.) If you have a laser printer, the results from within MAPIT can be quite good. Entering > GRAPHICS LASERJETII after bootup loads the TSR GRAPHICS and readies it for an HP LaserJet II or III. Check your DOS manual for a complete list of supported printers. Screen Capture A number of stand-alone programs, word processors, or TSR's can capture the screen image produced by MAPIT. If, for instance, you run MAPIT within a Windows' DOS box, you can capture a screen with the Print Screen key, switch back to Windows (ALT-TAB), and Shift/Insert the image into Paintbrush, a standard Windows appli cation. If your intent is create line images for import into a word processor, use Paintbrush's PICK/Inverse option to change the black background to white (and other colors to their compliments). Typically you might want to select a part or all of the image for direct insertion into your compound document. .PCX Files A more controlled way of capturing screen images from MAPIT is to select the TOOLS/.PCX menu items and save the images to files. The .PCX command allows you to invert MAPIT's black background to white first, if you so desire. The entire screen including the menu heading and footer, just the mapping area, or a selected rectangle from within the mapping area can be saved to a file whose name you choose. Later you can import these files from within Paintbrush by selecting File/Open with List Files of Type: set to PCX files. Then print the output to your output device. HP-GL/2 Output Hewlett Packard's Graphics Language/2 provides the most detailed output possible. Unlike the .PCX format which is limited to the resolution of your screen, HP-GL/2 is a vector format output which is limited by the resolution of MAPIT's underlying database and the resolution of your laser printer or pen plotting device. MAPIT directs this output to either your printer/plotter attached to the PRN port or to a .HGL file. If, for instance, you want to import HP-GL/2 input into a Microsoft Word for Windows document, first produce the file from within MAPIT, then, from within Word, select Insert/Picture setting the List Files of Type: option to HP Graphics Language (*.hgl). (In this example you must be using Word for Windows version 2.0c or later. Other word processors may or may not support .HGL format or compound documents.) Working from within Windows Working between MAPIT and paint or word processing programs can be facilitated by running MAPIT from within a Windows DOS box. This allows you to switch between MAPIT and your other program(s) by using the ALT-TAB task switching sequence. (Hold the ALT key down while clicking the TAB key until the desired program's banner comes up.) You needn't quit MAPIT each time you want to switch to the another program. The down side of this example of power computing is its demands on computer resources: you should have at least 4MB of RAM to insure adequate response and MAPIT will be slowed by approximately 30%. Be certain that your DOSPROMPT's PIF is set for High Graphics, Full Screen, Background, and that Advanced Options include Uses High Memory Area, High Graphics, Emulate Text Mode, and Retain Video Memory. Fun with Maps: If, as a child, you enjoyed paint-by-numbers, you'll understand why young children will love to create .PCX bitmapped maps in MAPIT, import them into paint programs (such as Paintbrush provided in Windows), and color them with flood fill. In Paintbrush, File/Open looking for *.PCX (see scroll box "List Files of Type"), open a map file, set the color to light blue and the tool to the paint roller, and begin color filling away. The files AFRICA.PCX and MID_EAST.PCX are provided for you as examples. If color bleeds across national boundaries, choose the paint command Zoom and add missing pixels to shore up the dike. (Note, you can't unflood dithered colors.) Students will find the ability to print maps of foreign countries invaluable in their shool work and helpful in visualizing the places where world events are unfolding. MAPIT Explained: MAPIT is a professional-level mapping application which includes a detailed database of the world and programs to interact with and supplement that database. You have the shareware version of MAPIT, a data-truncated version designed to give you the feel of MAPIT's full capabilities in an affordable format. Registered versions of MAPIT come in a range of mapping detail to fit a variety of users' mapping needs, hard disk limitations, and pocketbooks. The full MAPIT requires upwards of 28 MB of disk storage and is shipped on 24 1.44 MB 3.5" floppies. The different detail options of MAPIT's database can most easily be explained in terms of zoom factor. The initial MAPIT display including the whole earth is defined as zoom factor 1 (shown in the lower left corner of the screen). Zooming in to half that distance changes the zoom factor to 2. Zooming in on the US so it fills the whole screen, for instance, requires a zoom factor of approximately 5. The world database included with shareware MAPIT holds resolution to a zoom factor of approximately 6. Zoom much closer than that and you begin to notice the jaggies - a decided compromise in object detail. The island of Cuba, just south of the United States off the coast of Florida, is supplied in its full detail as an example of that available elsewhere in the registered data. You should be able to zoom in to a factor of 750 or so before detail becomes an issue. At Cuba's latitude, this means the entire screen width covers a distance of 31 miles (as opposed to 24,857 miles at zoom factor 1). As noted above, to provide this level of detail everywhere in the world requires a significant amount of disk space. Not everyone needs or wants to devote resources to supporting the maximum available detail world-wide. MAPIT's World Base Data level supports a global zoom level of 24 and requires more than 3 MB of disk space. Those wanting maximum detail are free to order from the six Detail packages, divided roughly by continent. See REGISTER.DOC for particulars. Included Programs: MAPIT The central display program for working with the voluminous MAPIT database. Detailed instructions are beyond the scope of this file. Turing the system with the Columbus Demo is the best way to learn its capabilities. (See Run MAPIT above.) Anytime you enter data into MAPIT, the data is stored in the private file EXTENDED.MP3. Copy or rename EXTENDED.MP3 to an unused filename to save the data permanently. > COPY (or REN) EXTENDED.MP3 myfile.MP3 Copy makes an additional copy of EXTENDED.MP3 while rename effectively deletes the original so that you'll start out with a fresh zero-length EXTENDED.MP3 the next time you run MAPIT Alternately you can run MAPIT with a command line argument specifying an alternate name for your private data file. > MAPIT /EXTENDED=myfile Enter MAPIT /? at the command line for a complete list of arguments. You can combine several of your private files with the binary copy command. > COPY /B FILE_1.MP3+FILE_2.MP3+... BIG.MP3 or > COPY /B FILE*.MP3 BIG.MP3 Remember that once files are combined, they can't be separated. Don't delete the orginals until you are sure. MAPIT TIPS MAPIT is busy scanning the databases when the cursor disappears between repaints. When it becomes visible again, MAPIT is ready to accept command input again. Remember, you can cut short each database scan by pressing the Esc key _ once for the main database and again, if necessary, for your private database. (Usually the main database scan is much longer.) Use the cross hairs displayed by POSITION/Center for more accurate lat/long display in the status line while measuring positions of objects. Cancel when finished with the right mouse button. Use DOS's NUL file name if you need an empty file to read from or a bit bucket to write to. For example, if you wish to view or operate on the private database file EXTENDED.MP3 file by itself without possible interference from the data in the main database WORLD.MP3, open MAPIT using the NUL file as the main database name: > MAPIT NUL FIGEDIT The figure creation/editing program. This program operates on files ending in the extension .FIG. There is a limit of 100 entities per figure. The key is to KEEP FIGURES SIMPLE. Detail which looks good at full screen is clutter at 10%. .FIG files can be concatinated with the binary copy just as .MP3 files. MP1TOMP3 A conversion utility designed to convert straight text files containing strings of latitutde/longitude pairs as might be generated from a CAD system or digitizer into .MP3 file format. .MP3 files require only about 1/3 the disk storage of their .MP1 counterparts. The .mp1 file format is a simple ASCII listing of latitudes and longitudes representing strings of connected points. String termination is marked by separator records. Enhancements: Many obvious and some not-so-obvious enhancements are in planning. Register your copy of MAPIT and let me know what YOU'D like to see. The best ideas come from users. This is your chance to influence the direction of product growth. Contents of Disks: The shareware distribution disks contain the following files: install.exe installation program installx.fil installation scripts vendor.doc distributor information & product description mapit?.pak packed archive files *.pcx example screen dumps for color fill and ad material readme.doc general information and instructions register.doc shareware registration form columbus.mp3 Columbus demo instruction database columbus.doc text from the Columbus demo manual.doc user's manual mapit.exe main program mp1tomp3.exe ASCII to .mp3 data converter track.mp1 example GPS data std.fig example figure file std.fnt stroked font file figedit.exe figures creation program Legal Considerations: Copyright: The collection of software described in this file and contained on this disk is the Shareware Version of MAPIT (the Software) and is Copyright 1992, 1993 John B. Allison. Ownership: You have purchased or otherwise obtained media containing a copy of the Shareware Version of MAPIT. The Software contained on the media and all rights pertaining thereto remain the sole property of John B. Allison. Shareware License: You are licensed to use Shareware MAPIT for a 21 day trial period afterwhich you must either register or cease using it. The data found in this Shareware Version is not nearly as detailed as that found in the registered versions. Most people are eager to move up to a higher level, and we encourage you to take that step today by registering with Allison Software 166 Shady Lane Apollo, PA 15613 USA (412) 727-2198 CompuServe 72600,1200 (See the file REGISTER.DOC on the distribution disk for registration instructions.) Shareware Distribution: Use Shareware MAPIT to distribute your own data so that others can view and use data of your authorship. You are free to copy and distribute the Shareware MAPIT IN ITS UNMODIFIED ENTIRETY on a separate diskette to friends or to other parties. Please label the diskette "Shareware MAPIT". You may distribute copies of the Software IN ITS UNMODIFIED ENTIRETY on a commercial basis for a fee not to exceed TEN DOLLARS total, or you may post the Software on electronic bulletin boards if you package the Software so that each diskette must be downloaded IN ITS UNMODIFIED ENTIRETY. If you post it, you must compress or otherwise package the Software in either a combined file named "MAPIT11.ext" or as two separate files named "MAPIT11A.ext" and "MAPIT11B.ext" where ".ext" reflects the type of compression or packaging used. You may not list the Software in advertisements, catalogs, or other literature as "FREE SOFTWARE". Shareware is "Try-Before-You-Buy" software, not free. Liability: SINCE YOU ARE NOT PAYING ANY MONEY FOR THIS SHAREWARE VERSION, YOU RECEIVE IT ENTIRELY "AS IS", AND NEITHER ALLISON SOFTWARE, THE AUTHOR, NOR ANY AGENT SHALL BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER. ASP Member: This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI 49442-9427 or send a Compuserve message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536.