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Release Notes in PDF format...

Release of V5.60 TNT products
April 1997

Table of Contents

Introduction

• Summary of New Features.
• New Platform.
• Planned Features for V5.70.

MI/X (MicroImages' X Server)

• Modifications
• Public Release
• Typical Positive MI/X Feedback

Sample Geodata

Installation

• TNTstart
• Installed Sizes
• Upgrading

TNTview^® 5.6

• Upgrades.

TNTatlas^TM 5.6

• Summary of New Features.
• Upgrades.

TNTlite^TM 5.6

• General
• Registration Discontinued
• Summary of New Features

Getting Started Booklets

• The Plan
• Completed Booklets
• Partially Completed Booklets
• Scheduled Next
• Later
• Final Group

Reference Manual

• Old Version
• HTML Version

New TNT Features

• System Level Features
• Display/Spatial Data
• Display/3-D Perspective (prototype process)
• * Import/Export
• Object Editor
• Raster Color Conversions
• * Raster Extract (prototype process)
• Raster Properties
• Locally Adaptive Contrast Enhancement
• Surface Modeling
• *DEM/ortho (prototype process)
• Vector Filtering
• Directional Analysis
• Interactive Line Following
• Grid Cells
• Polygon Fitting
• Distance Process
• *Databases
• Transfer Attributes
• Map Projections
• SML
• Internationalization

MicroImages Advanced Users' Workshop (AUW9)

MicroImages Authorized Dealers

• India--Electronics Corporation of India Ltd.
• India--Physical Planning Consultants (India), Ltd.
• Ecuador--aeromapa Cia. Ltda.
• Egypt--FOCUS Integrated Systems S.A.E.
• Brazil--Geosat Levantamentos Topograficos S/C Ltda.
• Colorado--Furst Light GeoTechnologies
• Washington--Cartafina Geographic Systems
• Colorado--Walsh, Inc.
• Peru--Walsh Peru S.A.

New Image Printers/Plotters Supported

• Printing

Computers

• Pentiums

Prices

• Price Changes

Reference Materials

• General
• Rewarded Papers

Staff Additions

Testimonials [and other interesting tidbits]

Sample TNTlite Demo INVITATION

Abbreviations

Color Plates

Release of V5.60 TNT products

MicroImages is pleased to distribute V5.60 of the TNT products and the 41st "quarterly" release of TNTmips. During the past quarter, there were no special problems in the TNT products. Everyone at MicroImages did enjoy a Holiday season, which was the first in nine years that did not have to be devoted to preparation for the Annual Users' Workshop.

V5.60 software development proceeded more or less on schedule. Even more importantly, most of this software effort was concentrated upon advancing the geospatial analysis tools in the TNT products. Each successive quarter, MicroImages is able to concentrate more and more energy on adapting, and occasionally even inventing, new analysis tools.

Summary of New Features.

The Project File now supports importing and saving raster objects in compressed form. RLE lossless compression is available for binary rasters; DPCM lossless compression is available for all except color compressed rasters; and JPEG compression is available for lossless and lossy compression.

The drawing tools in the object editor, display, and elsewhere now allow the creation and editing of multi-points, multi-lines, and multi-polygons. This is specially valuable in direct editing, in directly drawing regions, or in selecting complex areas.

Vector and TIN layers can now be viewed in 3-D and stereo separately or in superposition over a draped raster layer. When a TIN object is selected for viewing in 2-D or 3-D, it can be displayed as a TIN or converted and displayed as contours (isolines), or a combination of both.

The six different types of Element Selection dialogs in various processes have been standardized into one. This composite dialog has been simplified in appearance, and several new global tools have been added.

The Spatial Data Display and the Object Editing processes have a powerful new vector extraction capability. Any region created in these processes can be used to immediately extract a vector layer. Clipping to the inside or outside of a region can now be applied as part of this extraction (added to existing for modes of completely inside, completely outside, partially inside, and partially outside). The new extracted layer will have corrected attribute tables, including a recomputed standard attribute table (e.g. areas, perimeters, etc.). The editor will then allow immediate editing or saving of this layer as a new vector object.

Prototype regions can be interactively generated in Spatial Data Display, Object Editor, and new Raster Extract processes by eleven interactive methods: selected polygons, polygon fitting, buffer zones, viewsheds, raster thresholding, Voronoi polygons, basin growing, flooding with a dam, raster cells, texture growth, and point clustering. Once the prototype has been adjusted to fit the requirements, it can be immediately made into the active region for immediate application for selection, extraction, etc. from other layers.

TNTlite can extract a subarea ("lite-sized" object) when importing any vector format supported. Similarly, TNTlite can apply a query to an external database table when importing it in order to reduce the portion actually imported to a lite-sized object.

The Import process now supports ERDAS Imagine 8.x, compressed JPEG, NLAPS, ERS (RADAR), IRS (Indian), DISIMP, latest modifications to the ESRI coverage format, 3-D MOSS, and ODBC data sources. Compressed JPEG can now be exported.

All object types can now be edited directly in place. Unattached records can be filtered out of attribute tables during editing. As noted above, a new vector object can be extracted with any region, even when the clipping operation is selected. The new object will have correct attribute tables.

A new Raster Extraction process replaces the Copy Raster and Manual Resampling processes. It provides all the region generation tools and applies regions (cookie cuts) when extracting and creating new raster objects. All projection changes and attribute adjustments are completed during extraction.

The concept of the Wallis filter has now been expanded to apply to color images using a Locally Adaptive Contrast Enhancement approach. This procedure enhances a color image to bring out shapes in low or high contrast areas without significantly altering its color balance.

A more accurate iterative method is used in the Surface Modeling process for the conversion of an elevation raster object to a TIN object. The new method allows the input of the accuracy with which the TIN must approximate the elevation surface. It then iterates on the conversion until the difference between the TIN and the surface is everywhere equal to or less than this input value.

Surface modeling can now create stacked or parallel surface profiles and save them as a CAD object from which they can be displayed in 2-D or 3-D. A raster object can now also be optionally smoothed to provide smoother contours in the process.

The tabular view of selected database records or attributes now provides several important new features in Spatial Data Display, Object Editor, and other processes. The sum, mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, and a record count of fields can now be inserted into the table window. Records in the table window can be sorted by a selected field. The same kind of statistical information can be inserted into the sorted view for each group of records that has the same value in the sorted field. Colors can be assigned to style the table view to better identify these new table components. The records in the table view can be directly saved into a Project File or into a dBASE format, CSV (Comma Separated Values) format, or into an ODBC data source. Any two fields in the table can be selected and plotted in a new window.

The DEM/Ortho process has been restructured into four new procedures: Interior Orientation (Step A); Relative Orientation (Step B); DEM Extraction (Step C); and Orthorectification (Step D). These new procedures share a common general control panel, and each has a completely new highly interactive control interface. All have been redesigned primarily with the objective of insuring and checking the reliability of the control data which is being entered. This will not necessarily make these complex photogrammetric concepts simpler to learn to use, but will increase the quality of the results achieved. Portions of the steps are also significantly faster. Orthorectification (Step D) is not available but is equivalent to Restitution (Step 3) in V5.50 and is still available on the menu to produce the final orthoimage from the DEM generated with steps A, B, and C. This old step C can now perform the restitution at once on all three raster objects making up a color image with identical input parameters.

The Grid Generation process can now create and save various patterns of sample points from the cells it creates. The Polygon Fitting process now has interactive prototype preview for the polygons it creates. The Distance Raster process can now compute distances from the elements selected in a separate vector object.

New Platform.

V5.60 of all the TNT products is now available for LINUX for computers using the Intel 486, Pentium, and Pentium-Pro chips (on the "B" CD). LINUX is the free, public domain version of UNIX initially developed by Linus Torvalds (LINus UniX) in Finland. LINUX comes with its own X Server (Xfree86) by which it can be used directly with the TNT products. Since this is a UNIX variant, it does require the use of the serial version of the TNT software authorization key. Unfortunately this means that those using the gray key on a parallel port for the Windows based systems cannot use LINUX without converting to the red, blue, or green serial key. The serial key could be used on an empty serial port for operation of both the LINUX and Windows versions of the TNT products.

Planned Features for V5.70.

The following is a summary of the additional new features which will be demonstrated at the Advanced Users' Workshop in May and released in V5.70. They are grouped into two priorities: first or highest priority and a second or "as time allows" after the first priorities are met. You will find that this list is a full "dance card", and obviously everything will not get done. However, this quarter the development focus is upon things which need to be explained, demonstrated, discussed, and expanded upon at AUW9.

First Priorities.

Design a new graphical interface for controlling layers and other features while viewing in 2-D or 3-D. This interface will be something like the Element Selection dialog.

Directly read live geopoints from GPS units via the NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) communication standard and also from saved geodata collected by a GPS. Reposition the view based upon the coordinates of the live geopoints or other coordinate inputs. Support GPS collection of geopoints to describe elements in the Object Edit process in a fashion paralleling that for X-Y digitizers.

Support locking together a 2-D view and a 3-D view. Provide new navigation tools for positioning view point, view direction, ... directly on the 2-D view to control the parameters of the locked 3-D view.

Use the pop-in ToolTip concept to interactively display the attribute of the nearest element in the active layer in the 2-D and 3-D view.

Allow the selection and execution of an SML script as a layer in any 2-D or 3-D view in any process. This will use an SML script to determine and recreate this layer at the time of the redraw.

Automatically generate and display labels in a view from a selected attribute field.

During editing and elsewhere, draw solid lines of selectable color and width for new prototype elements instead of the current hard-to-see complement lines.

Provide tools for combining saved regions or between the active region and a saved region (e.g. AND, OR, XOR, ...).

Allow regions to be created from raster objects using expressions (i.e. equations).

Provide for cut and paste of any selected areas and elements between layers of varying geodata types (vector to raster, CAD to vector, ...).

Where appropriate, use the right button to pop-in a small list of frequently used edit functions. This provides a faster and quicker method of switching between simple choices such as edit, delete, ... than hunting for them in a dialog with many other, but less commonly used choices.

Add additional requested features into the raster editor (e.g. better WYSIWYG editing when zoomed in).

Add improved, easier, and expanded legend generation in both the screen and print layouts.

Add another more direct means for designing the link from an attribute table to an object.

Provide expanded and additional means to graphically display a single field selected in any table (e.g. a Profile window for a single field). Insert the tabular or graphical view of a table into a layout to be printed as part of it.

Sort tables on more than one field for easier reading, adding substatistic lines, and creating virtual records.

Add tools for creating and/or populating tables, such as inserting latitude and longitude fields from other tables or from vector elements (e.g. centroids of polygons), from an expression, with a default value, etc.

Add improved and expanded interactive controls into the image classification processes. Allow more control and flexibility for merging classes and labeling clusters.

Completely rewrite the mosaic process, adding new functionality requested by clients and perhaps automating some of the features.

Design a completely new element styles creation subsystem. This will expand the kinds of styles which can be used and allow creation of many new styles which have been requested. For example, geologists need asymmetric line styles (strike and dip lines, characters and symbols in lines, depression contour lines, ...), and other disciplines have similar complex requirements. To accommodate these and anticipated future needs, a totally new style definition scripting approach is being designed and will be supported by new interactive style design tools and new rendering (drawing) functions.

Complete the conversion of the on-line reference manual (formerly the on-line documentation) to HTML. Redesign the quick help structure to make it more convenient to create it, so that the software engineers can add into it as they go. Make it easy to translate the quick help files for two-byte languages. Add a means to get from quick help windows into the proper section of the expanded materials provided in the reference manual.

Significantly expand the SML function library. For example, add functions for: surface modeling, classification, region applications, TIN operations, vector combinations, and so on. Allow selected major processes to be called in SML scripts with limited control parameters.

Second Priority.

Support "near real time" flybys and drive through modes from previously merged or prepared elevation and draped geodata. Provide tools to be used to design the path of motion in 2-D view to control the concurrent 3-D view. Add interactive control of the movement of a 3-D view from mouse or joystick.

Add a hierarchical type legend display window providing similar functionality to that found in ArcView and MapInfo displays.

Add filter preview window into AutoTrace process. Integrate color binarization and color pattern mapping procedures into this process.

Create a new simplified process for resolution enhancement by the direct merger of multisensor data of various images of differing resolution, projection, etc. This might eventually become a procedure directly available in the 2-D and 3-D viewing on fast machines.

Prompt for attribute assignment when new elements are being created (e.g. when a line is added or a polygon is divided).

Modify the vector extraction process to use regions and the region generation tools.

Support the inclusion of "hard edges" in TIN objects (fixed known ridges, drainages, coast lines, ...) and modify the necessary processes to use them.

Support the use of two-byte file names for languages such as Japanese, Chinese, etc. and clients using them.

MI/X (MicroImages' X Server)

Modifications.

A compatibility problem was found between MicroImages' products and ArtiSoft's Lantastic 7.0 on W95. This incompatibility causes the Lantastic code to dial the modem when the MI/X server is started. To avoid dialing the modem, it is necessary to disable the remote connection feature of MI/X. All other MicroImages applications have been modified to use remote connections only when required. The method to disable the MI/X server from establishing remote connections is in the tnthost.ini file. Change the entry in [TCPIP]/InitTcpIp to be 'No'. If you have the old tntmips.ini file, the entry can be placed there as well.

Public Release.

At the beginning of January, MicroImages officially placed the MI/X servers for Mac, PMac, W95, and NT in the public domain. This was done by putting them up on www.microimages.com with appropriate downloading and installation procedures. After a couple of weeks, these free and very useful items were discovered by the Web crawling engines and newsgroups and publicized widely. This caused a "raid" on www.microimages.com with thousands of attempted accesses and hundreds of downloads from around the world each day. This brought www.microimages.com to a crawl for several days until we added memory and more machines to our external Internet network. A number of mirror sites also spontaneously sprung up to transfer the MI/X access to other servers in other nations.

The chronology of the successful downloads from www.microimages.com provides interesting insight into how such a procedure works on the Internet.

Interpretations. There were twice as many Mac and PMac downloads as for W95/NT. Part of the explanation for this is the same reason MicroImages had to develop the Mac/PMac MI/X. Apple had a poor X Server for the Mac and stopped developing it when the PMacs were first released. They actually turned the Mac version over to a private company who could not handle its development and has recently dropped it. In mid-March 1997, Apple also announced they were no longer going to develop their AI/X UNIX product for the PMac (they have NEXT now). There are still two commercial companies (White Pine and Tenon) developing X Servers for the PMac, both of which should work with the TNT products. MicroImages cannot compare their performance with the TNT products with that of MI/X, as we do not have their latest versions.

Mirror Sites. During the fifth week of the posting, information about it began circulate worldwide, and there were about 2632 completed downloads. The next week, www.microimages.com became overloaded with attempts that basically shut it down. As a result, mirror sites became available to shunt the load progressively more and more away from www.microimages.com. The current distribution of the mirror sites is: 6 Japan, 4 USA, 2 Australia, 2 Sweden, 2 Great Britain, 1 France, 1 China, 1 Spain, 1 Korea, 1 Kuwait, and 1 unknown. Access to MI/X has now taken on a life of its own. MicroImages is no longer the preferred source of these products, which now circulate freely, using registered mirror sites and many other locations where people just post it (university nets, etc.). Through this kind of multiplication effect, it might be reasonable to guess that perhaps 20,000 people have now experimented with MI/X. Mirror sites relieve the access problem but defeat the whole concept of getting people to visit and review the "paying" products at www.microimages.com. So the question remains of how to get 20,000 people to try TNTlite.

Feedback. If you search the Web or monitor the newsgroups, you will now find hundreds of messages about MI/X (or MIX) among other parties: some of them questions, many compliments, and some complaints requesting broader features. A sampling of the many thank you's received occur below at the end of this section. MicroImages has also received a lot of short requests for assistance on using MI/X, has answered many, and set up an FAQ on the public use of the MI/X servers. Most of the requests are for features for which the MI/X's were not designed and are not needed in connection with their use with the TNT products. However, in response, there were some minor MI/X errors corrected, and downloading and installation procedures were improved.

TNT Mirror Sites. MicroImages has had requests from Dealers to set up mirror sites for TNTlite access and for in-country access to TNTpatch. This sounds useful but is not yet easily accomplished with their communication rates, drive capacities, and the necessity of keeping things current. The current problems are as follows: Dealers do not have Web sites on-line 24 hours per day. Only slow modem access is available. Providing storage for all the versions of TNTlite requires one gigabyte of drive space. There are a lot of pieces and parts to keep straight for the TNT products. All of the TNT products and TNTpatch are completely upgraded on www.microimages.com on each Tuesday and Thursday. However, managing these and other difficulties may be resolved in time as Dealers establish robust Web sites. For example, mirror sites for just the W95/NT version would satisfy many existing needs.

Typical Positive MI/X Feedback.

email from Germany on 11 February 1997.

"I've solved the problem. Now it works. _very_ fine product. And easy to use. Has been just RTFM [Read That Fine Manual] problem in my case. Sorry, if I caused unnecessary work. I apologize."

email from Japan on 13 February 1997.

"I've been using your free MIX server -great work! I haven't had any problems running anything on it. You say in the documentation that you can use Windows as the desktop manager instead of TWM. How exactly is this done? I'm sure it's something painfully obvious, but I can't figure it out. Thanks!"

email from NASA Headquarters on 15 February 1997.

"Thank you so much for making MI/X publicly available! I've been hoping someone would release something like this for a long time!"

email from a U.S. university on 21 February 1997.

"Thanks for making your excellent product freely available. The latest version is quite stable and very useful."

email from a business site in California on 21 February 1997.

"HI my name is [name] and I have downloaded the demo version of MI/X for windows 95 and I was wondering if it comes on CD?, and if so are there any programs that come with it, what are they, and how much does it cost and where can I get the CD?" [What demo MI/X program? And, all the information on TNTlite, how to get the CD, etc. is on the same page on www.microimages.com as the X Server download information.]

email from a U.S. university on 25 February 1997.

"Great X windows program, very stable too. But would like to be able to copy an image (3-D finite element mesh) from the X window environment."

email from Cray Research on 28 February 1997.

"MI/X is a cool product, and fills a real need in the freeware community. Thanks!"

New Sample Geodata

Crow Butte Directory.

Both the TNT professional and TNTlite versions of the Crow Butte soil vector object are being reissued. Make sure to use this new object (by reinstalling the entire Crow Butte geodata set). MicroImages has used the new geodata maintenance tools being added to close up some leaking polygons, check and correct attribute errors, and recompute the standard attribute tables. In addition, some new TIN geodata has been added under CB_ELEV.RVC.

BEREA Directory.

The Berea geodata set distributed on the V5.50 CDs has the following additional Project Files added to it: BEREATRN.RVC, which contains the training sets for supervised classification; BERMNDV.RVC, which contains Modified Normalized Difference Vegetation Index raster objects for each of the six dates of the BEREAMSS raster multispectral image sets. These additional project Files contain additional data for use in the tutorials in the new Getting Started: Image Classification booklet.

CROPDATA Directory.

This RGBCROP.RVC Project File contains color airphoto raster objects also for use in the Getting Started: Image Classification booklet.

HAWAII Directory.

This contains varied Project Files with geodata for Maui and Hawaii for general use. The Project File MAUISURF.RVC provides the objects used for the tutorials in the new Getting Started: Surface Modeling booklet.

SURFMODL Directory.

This contains the Project File SURFACE.RVC also used in the Getting Started: Surface Modeling booklet.

EDITRAST Directory.

The Project File UNLPHOTO.RVC contains a grayscale raster object of 512 by 512 cells. It was cut out of a Digital Ortho Quarter Quad (DOQQ) for Lancaster County (i.e. for an area of Lincoln, Nebraska). This raster object is used throughout the tutorials in the new Getting Started: Editing Raster Geodata booklet.

The Project File LANCSOIL contains SHEET_45LITE which is a 512 by 512 cell cutout from a scanned Lancaster County NRCS printed soil survey sheet. It can be used in experimenting with the AutoTrace process in TNTlite. This Project File also contains SOILMASK which is a 512 by 512 cell cutout coregistered with SHEET_45LITE and contains null values used for transparent raster overlay in the tutorials in the new Getting Started: Editing Raster Geodata booklet.

FEATMAP Directory.

This directory contains the SECT27R Project File, which is used in the Getting Started: Feature Mapping booklet. The raster objects in this Project File are the separate red, green, and blue bands of frame-grabbed air video taken of a Small Unit Management Project (SUMP) site by the USF&WS. An 8-bit composite color raster generated from these three raster objects is also included. Other rasters used in the Getting Started: Feature Mapping booklet are found in the BEREA Directory.

THEMEMAP Directory.

This directory contains the geodata used in the Getting Started: Theme Mapping booklet. The points in the artifact vector object are a subset of the data collected for the Sayil Archaeological Project (Michael P. Symth and Christopher D. Dore, Principal Investigators). The points represent locations where ten or more slipped ware shards were found in a comprehensive survey of a prehistoric archaeological site in the eastern Puuc region of Yucatan, Mexico.

USA Directory.

The Nebraska Project File added to this V5.50 directory contains a modified county outlines object that has a new table with 1990 county populations in its polygon database. This object is used for the exercises in the Getting Started: Theme Mapping booklet.

FARMLITE Directory.

This Project File FARMLITE.RVC contains a collection of images, vectors, and other geodata from Otoe County, Nebraska. It can be used in connection with experimenting in some of the steps used in precision farming. There is no other written material available in connection with this geodata.

Installation

TNTstart.

A new MicroImages start-up "splash" logo was implemented on Windows 3.x and Windows 95/NT (stays up for five seconds when any TNT product is started.)

Installed Sizes.

Loading a full installation of TNTmips 5.6 onto your hard drive (exclusive of any other products, data sets, illustrations, Word files, etc.) requires the following storage space in megabytes.
 

V5.60 of the illustrations for the on-line reference manual requires an additional 28 megabytes. Installing all the sample geodata sets for TNTlite and TNTmips requires an additional 87 megabytes.

V5.60 of the TNT products for the DEC Ultrix, IBM PowerRISC RS/6000, and the Data General Aviion platforms is available upon special request for which a special CD will be produced.

Upgrading.

If you did not order an upgrade of your TNT professional product and wish to do so now, please contact MicroImages by FAX, phone, or email to arrange to purchase your annual maintenance and obtain the use of V5.60. Upon receipt of your order and processing, MicroImages will supply you with an authorization code by return FAX only. Entering this code when running the installation process allows you to complete the installation and immediately start to use TNTmips 5.60 and the other TNT professional products.

If you do not have an annual maintenance for TNTmips, you can purchase it to gain access to V5.60 under the elective upgrade plan at the cost in the tables below. Please remember that new features have been added to TNTmips each quarter. Thus, the more quarters you are behind V5.60, the higher your upgrade cost will be. As usual, there is no additional charge for the upgrade of your special peripheral support features, TNTlink, or TNTsdk, which you may have added to your basic TNTmips system.

Within the NAFTA point-of-use area (Canada, U.S., and Mexico) and with shipping by UPS ground: (+150/each means $150 for each additional quarterly increment.)
 

For a point-of-use in all other nations with shipping by air express: (+150/each means $150 for each additional quarterly increment.)
 

TNTview^® 5.6

The following is a summary of the new features added to V5.60 of the TNT products which are now available in TNTview 5.6. Detailed descriptions of these new features can be found in the appropriate section below on New TNT Features.

• Compressed raster objects can be viewed and imported.
• Raster, vector, and TIN objects can be viewed separately or superposed in 3-D and stereo. Contours can also be viewed for TIN objects.
• Eleven powerful new interactive region creation tools are now provided for interactive GIS analysis of vector and raster layers. These tools allow the direct creation and saving of database tables in other formats (dBASE, Access, ODBC) for immediate use in other systems.
• Multi-polygon, multi-line, and multi-point selection tools are available along with an improved Element Selection dialog.
• ERDAS Imagine 8.x, compressed JPEG, NLAPS, ERS (RADAR), IRS (Indian), DISIMP, 3-D MOSS, and ODBC data sources can be imported.
• A window from an external vector file and a query on a database table can be used to create smaller objects during import.
• Tabular database views are improved: color, statistics row, substatistic rows, and an X-Y field plotter.
• Support for LINUX on the Intel platform has been added.

Upgrades.

Within the NAFTA point-of-use area (Canada, U.S., and Mexico) and with shipping by UPS ground: (+50/each means $50 for each additional quarterly increment.)
 

For a point-of-use in all other nations with shipping by air express: (+50/each means $50 for each additional quarterly increment.)
 

TNTatlas^TM 5.6

Summary of New Features.

The process will now default to using the entire screen for the view window when the process is started. The back, home, and previous icon buttons are now available in a group at the right side of the menu bar in addition to the Navigator window. This means that the Navigator window (which is always being obscured on small screens) is needed only when selecting and moving to an adjacent view.

Upgrades.

Within the NAFTA point-of-use area (Canada, U.S., and Mexico) and with shipping by UPS ground: (+50/each means $50 for each additional quarterly increment.)
 

For a point-of-use in all other nations with shipping by air express: (+50/each means $50 for each additional quarterly increment.)
 

TNTlite^TM 5.6

General.

A total of 2000 copies of TNTlite 5.5 kits have been distributed directly and via Dealers, bringing the total TNTlite CDs shipped to 7000. Currently, completed downloads of TNTlite range between 20 to 40 per week. Many others start a download but get discouraged when they grasp the time required.

A copy of the standard V5.60 of the "A" or "B" CD will be shipped to each party who has registered their copy of the V5.50 CD. These copies will be shipped when all shipments to professional clients are complete.

Registration Discontinued.

TNTlite 5.60 kits will no longer contain registration forms, and MicroImages will no longer keep a record of registered TNTlite users. Correspondingly, the purchaser of a TNTlite 5.6 kit will not be able to register to receive the next version of TNTlite free of charge. The principal reason for this is that the TNTlite 5.6 kits will contain a minimum of 12 printed Getting Started booklets, and this number will continue to grow as the quarter progresses. The additional expense of printing and shipping these booklets as part of the kit will preclude shipping a second set for the next version.

Within a month, the TNTlite 5.6 kit will begin shipping in a box instead of an envelope to accommodate the expanding amount of material. It is also likely that the price of a single TNTlite kit will increase to $35 sometime later in this quarter, as the number of Getting Started booklets increases.

Summary of New Features.

The following is a summary of the new features added to the TNT products to improve their usability in general and for TNTlite 5.6 in particular. Detailed descriptions of these new features can be found in the appropriate section on TNTmips.

• At least ten Getting Starting tutorial booklets will be shipping in the TNTlite 5.6 kits.
• The additional sample data sets for these booklets are included on the V5.60 TNT product CDs. Additional TNTlite booklets will be added during the quarter as outlined below. Their sample data can be downloaded as it becomes available.
• TNTlite now allows raster objects ranging from between 512 cells by 512 cells to 256 cells by 1024 cells (with a product not to exceed 512 times 512).
• All external "foreign" vector geodata can be windowed down in geographic area to fit into "lite-sized" vector objects as it is imported.
• All external "foreign" database tables can be reduced in size to fit within the 1500 records per table limit for a "lite-sized" database table.
• Now all imported geodata can be windowed as imported into raster, vector, CAD, or database objects. A user of TNTlite no longer has to go back to or use the product which produced the source geodata in order to introduce it, or a portion of it, into TNTlite.

Getting Started Booklets

The Plan.

Version 5.50 of the TNT products provided you with the first trial Getting Started tutorial booklet entitled: Displaying Geospatial Data and the associated geodata sets. MicroImages has decided to turn this into a unique series of tutorial booklets that you can use to learn about geospatial analysis on your own using the free TNTlite product at home or your professional TNTmips products. These booklets are also useful for laboratory references and exercises for those using the TNT products to train others in geospatial analysis or one or more of its components: GIS, image analysis, desktop mapping, surface modeling, ...

V5.60 contains nine of these booklets in final or draft format. There are now about 40 Getting Started color illustrated booklets planned with between 16 and 32 pages each. Almost all the exercises in these booklets can be completed in TNTlite. The sample geodata sets used in these exercises are included on the TNT products CD and can be downloaded from the MicroImages Web site. The list below provides the current status and availability of all the booklets. At any time you can check at www.microimages.com for an update on this schedule. Preparing the 500 to 1000 pages of such heavily illustrated materials takes time for our professional writers. They can produce between six and nine booklets per quarter. However, as the quarter passes, they will have to spend more and more time updating the existing booklets for newly released changes in the processes covered. As a result, the goal of completing the series becomes progressively harder to reach. Please consider the dates of availability presented in this schedule as tentative and optimistic, as good things always seem to take longer than anticipated.

Additional Getting Started booklets will be provided in black and white printed form with each new quarterly release as they are completed. All Getting Started booklets completed will also be provided in black and white printed format with each new TNTmips professional product. The printed versions are also included in the $25 TNTlite CD kit. Sorry, earlier and newly released booklets are available in printed form only as part of the latest TNTlite kit or with new products.

The original Getting Started booklets are completely illustrated in color. Their authors have attempted to make sure that the salient features of each illustration are visible in the black and white printed versions. Images of the original color versions of each completed booklet can be viewed or downloaded via Internet Explorer or Netscape at www.microimages.com under Documentation and Support. They can also be printed in color on your printer using these browsers from www.microimages.com or after they have been downloaded to your drive. MicroImages will place all the available booklets on the V5.70 CDs (probably in Adobe Acrobat format and with the Acrobat reader for their viewing and color printing).

The covers of the Getting Started booklets introduce Ptolemy, a character who is symbolic of the purpose of these booklets. Ptolemy's tutoring tasks are to help newcomers and students learn more about geospatial analysis and the way it has been implemented in the TNT products.

Ptolemy (A.D. 127 -151) was a Greek teacher, mathematician, astronomer, and geographer in Alexandria. His treatise called "Geography" was the basis for his map which recognized the world was round and employed a system of latitude and longitude based upon a spherical earth which influenced mapmakers for hundreds of years. However, his map and system suffered from a lack of reliable observations and became lost knowledge that had to be rediscovered by empirical means by other, much later European cultures.
 

Completed Booklets. [10 units]

Partially Completed Booklets. [3 units--late March or early April availability]

Scheduled Next. [9 units--late April to mid May availability]

Later. [8 units]

Final Group. [8 units]

Reference Manual

Old Version.

With the distribution of the initial collection of Getting Started booklets, the on-line documentation begins to assume its correct role--that of a reference manual. As usual, it is also available in several forms on-line, on CD, printed, and eventually via HTML on-line and on the Internet. As a result, the on-line documentation is hereby renamed the TNT Reference Manual.

The Reference Manual this quarter has 2510 single spaced pages. Last minute supplemental sections which do not occur in the on-line or Microsoft Word versions were created for new processes and features. These sections were completed for V5.60 after the master CDs were created for the reproduction process. These 55 additional pages are included in supplemental, printed form as follows.

Object Editor (11 pages)

Extract Raster Objects (25 pages)

SML Version 5.6 (Revision to Appendix for V5.50--19 pages)

HTML Version.

MicroImages has been able to successfully test convert a portion of the on-line reference manual into HTML format for direct use in browsers. This works out the general procedures. Now there remains only the mechanics of passing all the existing pages through the conversion software and making minor corrections. The Display section of the reference manual is available on the V5.60 CDs for your experimentation. If you do not already have Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 installed (or Netscape), it can be installed from the TNT products CD and used to browse this initial volume of the reference manual.

New TNT Features

* Paragraphs or main sections preceded by this symbol "*" introduce significant new processes, or features in existing processes, released for the first time in TNTmips 5.6.

> Paragraphs or main sections preceded by this symbol ">" introduce modifications in the TNT professional products which have additional, special significance to the users of the TNTlite products.

System Level Features.

* Project Files.

Raster Compression. Raster objects can now be stored as compressed (lossy or lossless) or not compressed. The compressed raster object is still pyramided and tiled, so these advantages for speed of access are not lost. Whenever and however a raster object is compressed, all its pyramid layers are also automatically compressed. The types of compression available for your selection include RLE (Run-Length Encoding) for binary rasters; DPCM (Differential Pulse Code Modulation) for 8-, 16-, 32-bit integer raster objects and 32-bit and 64-bit floating point raster objects; and JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) for 8-bit grayscale and 24-bit color composite rasters.

RLE and DPCM compression are lossless compression methods. They reduce the stored size of the raster object in the Project File without changing the raster object's content in any way. Any subsequent analysis of the raster object will not be affected by the use of these compression methods. Of course, compression requires additional computation.

DPCM Compression. DPCM compression has been selected as optimal for use in the TNT products. It will be the most frequently used, and it significantly outperforms commercially available general compression programs such as pkzip or arj. It provides good compression ratios (2.2 - 2.5 to 1 for typical aerial or satellite images of 8-bits per pixel).

DPCM is optimized for speed during decompression. A typical user of the TNT products will, on the average, display (i.e. read) from a raster object many more times than they will save (i.e. write) to a raster object. DPCM compression method requires more time compressing the raster object when it is saved than decompressing the raster object during reads. As a result, you will find that saving an image to a DPCM compressed raster object will take a little longer than saving it uncompressed. However, the subsequent viewing of the DPCM raster object may not be noticeably different from viewing its uncompressed equivalent.

All compression methods can now also be directly applied when other raster formats are imported. Since importing a raster object takes time anyway, this is a good place to add a bit more time to compress with DPCM if viewing portions of the image several times is your initial objective (which is almost always the situation). The new Raster Extract process introduced in V5.60 (see below) can be used to move rasters back and forth between their compressed and uncompressed forms.

RLE Compression. Run-Length Encoding will be available only if you have binary rasters and is best applied when you have scans of line drawings, binary masks, and so on. How much compression you can expect varies greatly with the contents of the raster. For example, RLE compression can reduce a raster object containing a soil polygon map or a mask of larger polygons by a factor of 20 to 1 or greater (i.e. to a few percent of its original size). This means that much less data is being read or written to your hard drive, which is faster and offsets some of the time needed to RLE compress or decompress these raster objects.

JPEG Compression. When you choose to store a raster object in compressed fashion, please carefully consider its future use by you or someone else. Compression into JPEG can be lossless and behaves as outlined above. However, you may also choose to compress a raster object of an image 20 to 1 (to 5% of its original size). This image may look almost identical to its original uncompressed equivalent. JPEG achieves this large compression by slightly altering the data values in the raster so that they are identical in a local group to their neighbors. To achieve a 5% size, the data value may only be changed by 3 counts in 256 counts (i.e. from 222 to 225). This level of change is hard for the human eye to detect at first inspection. You may think of it as only removing "image noise" or reducing image detail and content, depending upon your viewpoint and image analysis objectives.

If all you or any subsequent user of the raster object wants is to see the pretty picture, then this JPEG compression to 5% is significant, and the visual effect is negligible. It may even be reasonable to subsequently do direct photo-interpretation of such raster objects. But, remember that if you JPEG compress with losses, this subtle information is lost forever from any subsequent use of this raster object! For many uses of images and scans of other materials, you will not want to use lossy compression. Thus, you will need to give the impact of the use of lossy compression on subsequent operations very careful consideration.

Never use lossy JPEG compression on images destined for multispectral/multitemporal classification, feature mapping, and so on. Similarly, scans of color maps destined for raster to vector conversion should not use lossy JPEG. Even scans of grayscale soil maps from low grade printed matter should not be subjected to losses. When in doubt, do not use lossy compression. MicroImages will put warning windows in the appropriate image analysis processes to identify that somewhere previously in a TNT product, the raster object being selected has "lost" information by lossy compression. However, even when this is in place, it will not help you when you have to go back and rescan a bunch of color airphotos which you have subsequently passed through a lossy compression and decompression cycle.
 

IMPORTANT: Give careful consideration to any possible subsequent use of a raster object compressed with the JPEG lossy option. Remember, these losses in image quality cannot be recovered except by starting over with the never-compressed form. However, raster objects of 5% of their original size can be very useful if you can easily return to the source materials by reimporting, using the original never-compressed form, or rescanning the photos.

> TNTlite Raster Size Limits. The overall raster object size limit in TNTlite has not been changed from the product of 512 by 512 cells. However, for increased utility, TNTlite now allows raster objects ranging from between 512 cells by 512 cells to 256 cells by 1024 cells. Rectangular raster objects are useful in many situations--for example, if you wanted to experiment with mosaicking several small video images of 200 by 200 cells. Another application would be to use three 1024 by 256 geographically adjacent "lite" raster objects in layout to make a 1024 by 768 base for a map or a vector overlay on the screen.

SPOT Header Information. Support/Maintenance/Project File can now display the detailed information in the SPOT Header subobject. This feature was added in connection with improving the planned use of SPOT imagery in the DEM/Orthophoto process. The information displayed includes: satellite and instrument names, spectral mode, preprocessing level (along with explanation in plain English), coordinates in SPOT Grid Reference System, viewing date and time, satellite revolution number inside 26-day cycle, sun azimuth and elevation, angle of incidence, true east rotation angle, position of scene center and corners in Lat/Lon coordinates, Map projection and map coordinates of the upper left image corner (for 2B processing level), absolute calibration coefficients, look directions of CCD detectors, satellite angular rates during acquisition (73 records), and satellite ephemeral data (9 records).

* Graphical Tools.

General. The separate manual dialogs for the graphical tools are now integrated into main tool dialogs. This follows MicroImages' policy of continually striving to reduce the number of dialogs on the screen at one time (they multiply easily, especially in new processes).

The manual subsection is implemented as a pop-down panel if there are other controls on the dialog and is dropped via a "Manual Entry" toggle button. If there are no other controls for the dialog (e.g. in most of the vector add tools in various processes), the manual section becomes the tool dialog, and no toggle button will exist to remove it.

Rectangle Tool. A manual editing section has been added to precisely position the rectangle tool. There are three different manual entry dialogs which are accessed via tab pages. The three are 1) enter center point, height, and width; 2) enter corner, height, and width; and 3) enter extents.

Line/Polygon Tool. The controls for the line/polygon tool are now icon buttons. The line generated on screen has new graphical markers to easily identify the start and end of the line. The start of the line has a square, and the end of the line has a circle. These two shapes correspond to the "Add Start" and "Add End" icons on the tool dialog. The tool mode ("Draw" and "Stretch") is now retained between editing sessions.

Multi-Point Tool. A new power tool called the multi-point tool has been created. This tool is currently used in the tool region generation section in the "Element Selection" dialog for the Spatial Data Display process (in both TNTmips and TNTview) and in the Object Editor process. This tool allows the manipulation of multiple points including adding, moving, deleting, and manual editing. Previously you could add and delete single points only. Now you can add a series of points and "back up" through them.

Multi-line/Polygon Tool. New power tools called the multi-line and multi-polygon tool have been created. These tools are currently used in the tool region generation in the "Element Selection" dialog in Spatial Data Display process (in both TNTmips and TNTview) and in the Object Editor process. They allow the manipulation of multiple lines and/or polygons including adding, moving, deleting, and manual editing.

An example use of the multi-polygon tool would be to draw a series of polygons, one after another, around an image or other features which can then immediately be made a region. When drawing these polygons, you can back up through them to alter any one of them. When combined with the regions concept in the editor, this is a very powerful, interactive way to draw a series of polygons around features in an image, make them a region, and then immediately apply the region to another layer (e.g. to extract with clipping from a vector layer)! This is just one example of this powerful "draw" and "click" kind of interactive geospatial analysis which can be done with these new tools. These same kind of powerful interactive tricks can be performed with any of the improved drawing tools outlined above.

Element Selection Dialog.

The Element Selection dialog has been standardized throughout the processes. Now you will have to remember how to use only this single dialog. The options it presents vary somewhat from location to location depending upon the features required for the process which calls it. Most of the changes to this dialog have been graphical with a few new buttons added.

Simplifications.

1) In V5.50, opening the element selection dialog caused all element types (lines, nodes, polygons, ...) in all viewable layers to be selectable. This presented too many choices and was confusing. In V5.60, only the element types in the "active layer" are initially selectable. The "active layer" is the layer highlighted in the main control panel.

2) The color of the selection icon button and symbol on each element type changes from red to cyan if the element type is made selectable. In V5.50, the icon selection button was simply grayed out as is standard for most "off" icon buttons. This new color change makes it easier to quickly visually detect which element types are on or off.

3) Two icon buttons have been added for fast global selection actions. The first is the "Unselect All" icon button which will unselect all elements in all layers for the display window. The second is a "Clear Selectable Set" icon button which will turn off all selection buttons for all the layers. This icon button is useful if you have element types selected in layers that you no longer want to select from.

4) An icon "Control..." button has been added for each layer. Use it to directly open the Layer Controls dialog for that type of layer. This allows you to directly change the display characteristics of any layer. You no longer have to open the Layer Controls window, open the Layer Control dialog, change the layer's characteristics, close the dialog, and reopen the Element Selection dialog.

5) In V5.50, the rows of icon buttons for element types which were not being displayed for a layer were shown in gray. Nothing could be directly done with these rows. Now if the element type is not selected for display, the icon row will not show. This significantly reduces the number of rows of icons to those actually being used. To expose an element control row for a particular layer, use the new Control icon button for the layer, and add that element type to the display.

* Interactive Vector Extraction. Extracting vector elements from a layer using any region has been added to Display Spatial Data and the Object Editor processes via the Element Selection dialog. Think of this powerful tool as an interactive vector extraction procedure. The elements selected in this fashion create a temporary vector object. The attribute tables of the original vector layer will automatically be filtered and new tables created for the temporary vector layer that contains only the records attached to the vector elements extracted. The source vector layer is then automatically hidden, and the new temporary layer is displayed. This new temporary layer can also be saved in the Object Editor process as a new object in a Project File.

Six methods are now available for defining how the region will extract or "cookie cut" the source vector layer. They are "Completely Inside", "Partially Inside", "Clip Inside", "Completely Outside", Partially Outside" and "Clip Outside". The two new methods which 'clip' the source vector elements at the edge of the region alter the topology of the elements. Topology will automatically be recomputed for the new temporary vector layer. These 'clips' also alter the standard attribute tables (e.g. smaller polygon areas), so these tables are also recomputed.

In the Object Editor process, this temporary vector layer functions as a normal editable layer and can immediately be used for any additional editing and analysis. It can also be saved and then immediately added as an edit layer to avoid directly altering its contents. Obviously, a great deal of computational effort is being performed in this new region procedure. Its use as an 'interactive' tool will thus be a function of the speed of your computer and its drives and the complexity of the source vector layer.

* Region Generation.

Several color plates are attached to illustrate the new interactive region generation tools, procedures, and features. Please consult them to clarify the discussion of regions in the following subsections.

Prototyping Regions. New, powerful methods are now available for creating regions in Display Spatial Data, the Object Editor, and the new Raster Extract process. Eleven methods are introduced in V5.60, and all are similar in general operation. They each present a similar Region Generation Preview dialog. This dialog provides you with simple sliders and buttons to design a prototype region. Since you are only creating a prototype region, it can be immediately altered by changing one of the sliders or buttons.

For example, the "Buffer Zone" region generation method provides a slider to interactively adjust and change the width of the buffer zone around the selected or drawn point, line, and polygon elements. Changing this slider causes new buffer zone regions to be displayed (i.e. changes the prototype region). A 'color' button allows you to change the color of the line defining the buffer zones (i.e. prototype region). The line width of the boundary can be changed as well.

All the Region Generation Preview dialogs have sliders for the principal control parameter(s), line color and width buttons, and so on. All dialogs