|
TNT Products V6.0
|
Release
Notes in PDF format ...| 200 MHz Pentium PC, W98, Fat32 with IDE (DMA) controller | 4.7 MB per second |
| 266 MHz Pentium PC, W98, Fat16 with Ultra IDE (DMA) | 5.6 MB per second |
| 200 MHz Pentium PC, W95, Fat32 with IDE (PIO) | 7.6 MB per second |
| 200 MHz Pentium PC, W98, Fat16 with IDE (without DMA) | 2.8 MB per second |
| 200 MHz Pentium PC, W98, Fat16 with SCSI | 3.9 MB per second |
| 400 MHz Pentium II, NT4.0, NTFS with IDE | 6.6 MB per second |
| 132 MHz Mac, MacOS 7.x, HFS with SCSI | 5.0 MB per second |
| 266 MHz Mac G3, MacOS 8.5, HFS+ with Ultra IDE | 6.2 MB per second |
| 300 MHz Mac G3, MacOS 8.5, HFS+ with Ultra SCSI | 9.5 MB per second |
| 233 MHz iMac G3, MacOS 8.5, HFS with Ultra SCSI | 10.0 MB per second |
The Apple iMac is a low-cost computer, which at $1299 has only one standard configuration and was tested here. However, from these test results, you can see that it has the best drive and controller. It provides a read rate of 10 megabytes per second. This is higher than any other computer in MicroImages’ possession, including UNIX workstations. As a result, although it has a somewhat slower processor (at 233 MHz), it has good overall performance when used with the read/write intensive processes of TNTlite or any of the TNT professional products. Furthermore, Apple has announced that this model iMac will be lowered in price to $999 in January when it introduces a new model of the iMac.
Priority of Features for V6.10
As usual, it is not clear if the MicroImages software engineers will get all these tasks done for V6.10. Thus the following list represents only our current priority efforts and plans. The designation [available now] means the feature has already been added since the V6.00 CDs were created and can be tested in beta form by downloading the process(es) involved.
System Level.
An auto-start electronic tour of the TNT products is being produced by MicroImages in PowerPoint form with slides, MPEG movies, audio, and so on. It is directed specifically toward those who obtain TNTlite in electronic format (CDs or downloading). It will introduce the TNTlite user to all the auxiliary electronic materials provided to assist in learning and using it (for example, tutorials, reference manual, patches, software support, upgrades, ...). It will also provide access to materials describing and promoting the TNT professional products.
On-Line Help. The “Quick Help” structure in the TNT products will be replaced. The new approach will use the internal HTML interpreter first introduced in V6.00. This will enable MicroImages’ scientific writers to easily add and expand the on-line help instead of software engineers. You will also be able to add, via HTML, your own reference notes and instructions for each operation you have mastered. It will also enable easier translation and its maintenance for the on-line help.
Visualization. An alternative ArcView-like layer control panel will be added for use in simpler visualizations. It will integrate that product’s useful automatic legend generation features. It will be especially useful in creating products in SML.
Provide a link to the native MapInfo format (TAB: graphics and databases).
Allow text labels to occur in boxes which mask all features from all other layers (for example, mask out all lines that cross them). Provide options to control how these label backgrounds will be displayed (for example, background color).
The display/visualization process used in all the TNT processes will be modified to isolate the graphics engine which does all the work (communication with RVC, projection changing, compositing, regions, ...) from the X/Motif based user interface calls. This Geospatial Rendering Engine (GRE) will be the core of a TNTatlas Internet server which will accept input from JAVA applets operating in a web browser and render the requested view. The GRE can serve as the basis for the development of geospatial products that use the standard Windows user interface. MicroImages will also license the GRE to other software developers for use in their products.
3D Simulation. Modifications will be made so that faster rendering can be made from objects that can be loaded into memory. Appropriate methods for splining in X,Y, and Z will be added to assist in creating smoother paths. Options will be provided to insert a plan view and/or a flight profile into the top/bottom of an MPEG movie. The viewing position will move across these inserts. Use of pyramid layers will be supported to provide for faster MPEG movie creation, even with foreground smoothing and background speckle reduction introduced in V6.00.
Legends. Improvements are planned for the layout and presentation of legends in both the display and hardcopy formats.
Regions. A procedure will be added to the region creation tools to use an SML script to create a region.
TNTatlas Server. An Internet based TNTatlas server is being created as a new MicroImages product. The first version will be quite modest in its goals. A JAVA applet to be used in browsers to communicate with this TNTatlas server is being written. It will create an appropriate local (browser) interface, collect client inputs (for example, select local and layers, zoom, show DataTips, ...) and send them to the TNTatlas server. The source code for this JAVA applet will be provided to all of you for possible modification for use with the TNTatlas server product.
SAR. A process will be added to correct slant range SAR (Synthetic Aperture RADAR) images to plan view with georeferencing. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has many SAR images from aircraft and spacecraft available in this form [see format support below].
Styles. The line style editor will be improved. A new feature will support the insertion of symbols and characters into line styles as they are rendered.
Import/Export. All of the import and export processes are being rewritten so that each individual import or export conversion process is a function [currently underway]. This will enable all these functions to be provided for your use in SML. Perhaps more important is that the source code will be revealed for a number of these functions for file types with formats already in the public domain. This will provide models to those who wish to use the TNTsdk to write their own specialized import/export plug-ins for use in SML or on-line in TNTmips.
Add export from CAD and vector objects to the native MapInfo format (graphics and attributes) often referred to as TAB [currently underway]. Export nodes having attributes as point data for use in other processes such as surface fitting.
Object Editing. Add direct editing of the native MapInfo format (TAB: graphics and databases). Provide more capabilities to interactively edit TIN objects. Convert selected nodes to point elements. Step through all selected elements to identify those without attributes and allow their attribution. A “node-turn” table (for example, right turns only) will be added for use in network analysis.
Hyperspectral Analysis. The hypercube object has already been created, but it was omitted from V6.00 as its insertion at the end of the development cycle was risky [underway now]. The Minimum Noise Fraction transform is being added to assist in mixed pixel extraction [underway now]. An interactive window will be added to assist in selecting layers by wavelength to display, show in n-Dimensional Visualizer, and so on. It will also show spectra, atmospheric absorption bands, ... for your reference while selecting bands.
Databases. Faster access to individual records via ODBC will be provided. The use of constraints to control the form and characteristics of the entry of attributes will be expanded.
SML. Expansion of the TNT geospatial programming language will continue. You will be able to create and control more layers in the View window: text, map-grids, scale bars, regions, SML scripts, and so on. Development of new suites of functions will focus on those you request and:
import and export of objects
surface modeling
watershed analysis modeling
more features for database forms via database constraints
conversion between 8-, 16-, 24-bit, and composite rasters
conversion between color models: RGB, HIS, HBS, CMY, CMYK, ...
Tutorials. All available effort on the Getting Started booklets will be focused on bringing the existing tutorials concurrent with the features in this version. At least one new booklet entitled Introduction to Hyperspectral Imaging will be released (covering the concept of hyperspectral images).
Editorial and Associated News [by Dr. Lee D. Miller, President]
NASA Project Funded.
I am pleased to announce that MicroImages is a partner in one of 10 new NASA projects recently competitively awarded to study the potential uses of hyperspectral imagery. The following press release in a weekly Space News newspaper in September announced the recipients of these contacts. [quoting directly from Space News in September.]
Industry
To Study NASA Partnerships.
“NASA has selected 10 projects that could be the first step toward new partnerships between the agency and companies that use hyperspectral remote sensing data.”
“The purpose of the Earth Observations Commercial Applications Program—Hyperspectral projects, managed by the Commercial Remote Sensing office at Stenos Space Center, Miss., is to demonstrate whether there is enough overlap between NASA’s scientific uses of hyperspectral information and marketable applications of the same data to form partnerships, Bruce Davis, Commercial Remote Sensing program chief scientist, said in a Sept. 9 telephone interview.”
“The geological, agricultural, environmental and water quality projects awarded Sept. 4 will be conducted by the following companies: Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, NY; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD; Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, Bozeman, MT; Applied Analysis, Billerica, MA; California State University at Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA; Boeing Information, Space and Defense Systems, Seattle, WA; GDE Systems Inc., San Diego, CA; MTL Systems Inc., Beavercreek, OH; Opto Knowledge Systems Inc., Torrance, CA; and Spectral International, Arvada, CO. Each two-year project cannot exceed NASA funding of $300,000 per year.”
“NASA needs to see if the data requirements for commercial applications are similar enough to NASA’s scientific requirements to partner with industry, Davis said.”
“The projects will use data from NASA’s Airborne Visible-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer.”
“‘The savings could be significant to NASA if there is an overlap in scientific and commercial requirements.’ Davis said.”
An executive summary of each of these 10 funded proposals can be found at http://www.crsp.ssc.nasa.gov/hyperspectral/partners.htm. Four of the 10 projects awarded are concerned with investigation of the applications of hyperspectral imagery in precision agriculture. MicroImages is a partner in the project being administered through California State University at Monterey Bay. In addition to the SIVA Center at this University, the other partners in this project are Dole Agriculture, the largest grower of lettuce in the United States, and the Ecosystems Branch at the NASA Ames Research Center. The executive summary for the project in which MicroImages is a participant is attached as Appendix A.
Role of TNTlite.
MicroImages’ participation in this program will be in the development of new hyperspectral analysis software features focused upon precision agricultural applications. All software features added under this project will be made available to all for free via the normal releases of TNTlite. This was announced at the NASA sponsored kickoff meeting for the 10 project participants in Denver in October and was accompanied by the distribution of TNTlite 5.9, the attached color plate entitled Free Hyperspectral Analysis, and other materials. All the participants in this meeting are also being sent a V6.00 CD so that they will also have access to TNTlite 6.0. Since all 10 of these NASA sponsored projects will be using AVIRIS imagery, they could experiment with the use of TNTlite in parallel to whatever other hyperspectral analysis software they currently use or will develop.
Limited Image Collections.
During the NASA briefings at the October meeting, it was quite surprising to me that no other pending or future sources of hyperspectral imagery during these 2 year projects or later was even discussed, other than continued operations of the AVIRIS. Questions asked by participating contractors with regard to possible new, future sources of NASA sponsored satellite or aircraft hyperspectral imagery, other than AVIRIS, went unanswered. It was clear from this briefing that NOAA has an increased interest in the collection of imagery by the AVIRIS one-of-a-kind sensor for coastal studies. It was also made crystal clear that these 10 projects are only one of several different NASA and NOAA programs which must be serviced by this single JPL based AVIRIS aircraft program. As a result, image collection missions for next year are heavily oversubscribed by all competing programs, resulting in limited image collection for all experimenters: NOAA, NASA, and others. Additional details on the situation in the current AVIRIS low-altitude flight program for NASA/NOAA/JPL are provided below in the Hyperspectral Analysis section.
Premature Promotion.
Every single day I come across a new article in which some author claims that hyperspectral imagery has wonderful applications. If only 2 application areas are mentioned in the article, precision agriculture is one of them. Yet those of us awarded contracts to do preliminary application research in this area have just started; almost no hyperspectral imagery is available, and no one, including NASA, has announced any serious new initiatives to collect any. Clearly, these authors are talking about, promoting, and selling something they know nothing about. Serious application of hyperspectral imagery in precision farming has some clear requirements which are not even close to being met today by the higher resolution monochromatic or 3 band optical imaging systems about to be orbited or being built.
Agricultural crops grow fast and on their own schedule, and their “sensible” conditions which require management action can onset rapidly and require immediate action. In other words, clear sky hyperspectral imagery is required at frequent intervals. Agricultural crops are spread over large land areas. Current postage stamp sized hyperspectral images that contain several agricultural fields will even fit in TNTlite, but currently are expensive and laboriously collected. Acquiring and processing such hyperspectral images at frequent intervals over a single agricultural test site of limited area cannot be accomplished even in carefully controlled, funded experiments. We are not even close to this kind of testing, as the equipment, commitment, analysis tools, and funding to collect the hyperspectral imagery and ground control data at 2 or 3 day intervals is not there even for limited research sites. Unfortunately, the popular press, and even some scientific journals which should know better, are taking a few isolated research results and blowing them up into what appears to be an immediate and magic utility in precision farming.
Suppose we examine only the area of hyperspectral image analysis, something that we know a little about at MicroImages. One of the things we can recognize is that almost all the methods which have been developed for the analysis of hyperspectral images originate from testing its applications in geology: mineral exploration and astrogeology in particular. TNTlite 6.0 now provides most of these methods. This is important, as MicroImages has many clients in the mineral exploration industry. They can immediately use these tools and are usually satisfied by a single hyperspectral mission over their project area. Yet many of the popular assumptions regarding the utility of hyperspectral images in agriculture result from applying these same methods to agricultural crops.
Agricultural Imagery Available.
Fortunately, by careful calculated design, the project in which MicroImages is participating judiciously chose agricultural sites in the Salinas Valley south of San Francisco. The AVIRIS program, sensor, and aircraft are based at Dryden Air Force Base just south of this valley, so more frequent overflights, even during AVIRIS engineering tests, might occur. This valley is also where some of the most valuable crops in the United States (per acre) are cultivated year round. This planned proximity has already provided the opportunity for the collection of usable imagery from AVIRIS flights in October and scheduled for next April. The other three precision agricultural projects funded for study by NASA with AVIRIS are located in such areas as Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. No crops were growing in these areas during the September/October low-altitude flight program or will be next April (except winter wheat). While far from providing for multitemporal analysis, these isolated hyperspectral images are of good quality and will provide the basis for the experimenting with analysis methods specifically oriented toward precision agriculture.
Multisensor Fusion.
MicroImages is now a software development participant in 2 important NASA sponsored experiments related to remote sensor applications in precision agriculture: high resolution SAR and hyperspectral image analysis. Both NASA sponsored aircraft programs are operated by JPL from Dryden (AIRSAR and AVIRIS) and collected high-resolution imagery in October of the same agricultural test site in the Salinas Valley, California at a resolution of from 5 to 8 meters. Currently the AVIRIS program contract group at JPL is processing these hyperspectral images to remove some of the aircraft and scanner induced geometric distortion. The AIRSAR program contract group at JPL has already processed and provided several SAR images and the digital elevation maps extracted from them. While this sample image set was collected for this project, as with all NASA sponsored imagery, it is available for anyone to experiment with in TNTlite after it is processed into usable images from JPL. All of these images are posted almost immediately (within a week or 2) for downloading from these programs on the JPL web site.
MicroImages will work toward fusing these images of differing geometry into a composite set. As this project progresses, at some future date, these images will be provided in some manner in a Project File format for your use. The SIVA Center at California State University has also already assembled—in Project Files—an excellent and unique set of supporting geospatial materials for the Valley and test site. These materials include crop maps, 1 meter resolution DOQQ of the Valley, the DEMs for these DOQQs, a Landsat TM image, a SPOT color-infrared image collected within a couple days of one of the SAR images, scanned topographic maps, and a large collection of color-infrared aircraft images.
Precision Ranching Proposal Pending.
MicroImages also recently participated in the preparation of another pending joint proposal to NASA about which no funding decision has yet been announced. There were over 100 proposals submitted to this program for a potential reward of 10 projects.
This proposed development project concerns experimentation in the practical application of satellite images in precision ranching operations. The title of the proposal is Connecting NASA’s Earth-Science-Enterprise Space Assets to Resource Management Needs in Precision Range and Regional Agriculture. This proposal was submitted to NASA via California State University at Fresno. It has many participants, all of whom are using TNTmips. Other project participants are located at California State University at Monterey Bay in California, the Peace Pipe Ranch in Texas, the University of Nevada at Reno in Nevada, and New South Wales Agriculture in Australia.
This project would address the test application of Landsat 7, EO1, and MODIS imagery in precision ranching and regional agricultural inventory. MicroImages’ participation would be in the development of additional software for precision processing of Landsat 7 TM imagery, image web site development, and APPLIDATs. As always, all these advances would become available via MicroImages’ TNT product line. Appendix B contains MicroImages’ official letter of commitment submitted to NASA as part of this proposal. It reviews some of the 30 year background remote sensing activities leading up to the submission of this kind of proposal.
Producing Finished Products.
The term geospatial analysis is becoming more commonly used to describe what it is used for at MicroImages—a higher level synergistic synthesis of component technologies such as image processing, GIS, CAD, surface modeling, and related software advances that deal with area. Low-cost software products are now available that specialize in focused or dedicated applications of combinations of images, vectors, CAD and/or databases. These products are introducing the term geospatial analysis and its association with the integrated use of these heretofore isolated data types to a much wider base of computer users.
Perhaps you are one of those preparing geospatial data, products, and results for others in your company, organization, or for sale. Perhaps you are the end user of geospatial products and are focused upon the use of the information they provide in making decisions or proceeding on to further analysis in other kinds of software. In any case, as geospatial analysis matures, we all have an increasing need to integrate its results into other products.
The extensive import and export capabilities of TNTmips are one response to the need to become part of a larger whole. However, they are often used to jockey geodata in and out of other software systems to get a geodata base assembled, and more and more, to solve a problem not possible in competing systems. The TNT products provide a more general purpose import and export functionality than our immediate competitors. In fact, recently we have concentrated on making the use of TNT products more efficient by spending considerable software engineering time and skills figuring out how to import, export, and link to our competitors’ native, internal formats such as ESRI’s E00 and coverage and MapInfo’s TAB. If our products are being used to create geodata (for example, TNTedit) or to solve problems in these systems, then dealing with their native formats make this easier for you.
As geospatial analysis spreads, there is also an increasing demand to produce finished results, such as high quality illustrated technical reports; fancy physical and electronic maps; geospatially oriented web sites; use of, and movement to and from, institutional databases; further analysis in spreadsheets and statistical packages; and so on. In many applications, general geospatial analysis and its component software are only beginning to produce results that can be moved out of this special activity area for further analysis. For example, areas measured from airphotos are more widely used now that orthophotos provide the basis for accurate measurement.
Geodata and the results of its analysis can be moved in and out of the TNT products to assist you in continuing on with its use in other popular products. To help you recognize and better understand these interfaces, I charged Dr. Merri Skrdla this quarter with creating a special Getting Started tutorial booklet on the specific topic Sharing Geodata with other Popular Products, even though separate booklets already exist on acquiring, importing, and exporting geodata. All these other booklets focus primarily upon moving around the spatial data and its attributes.
This new booklet should assist you in understanding some of the capabilities in the TNT products that can be used to exchange data with other popular software. Some of the procedures introduced are outlined below.
How to do screen captures on the Mac or Windows platforms.
How to capture windows into TIFF from within the X server.
Using these TIFF files in your word, composition, or graphics program.
Sharing text with other products.
Converting TNT layouts into Adobe Illustrator.
Converting TNT layouts into Adobe PDF format is now also available but was a last minute addition to the TNT products and is not yet covered in this booklet.
Using 3D simulations in Microsoft’s PowerPoint.
Directly linking to and using dBASE tables.
Using Microsoft Excel with TNT database tables.
Using other databases via ODBC.
Directly editing ESRI’s Arc/Info Coverage and E00 files.
Directly editing ESRI’s ArcView shapefiles.
Do competing products do most of these things? I believe you will or have found that they do not. These kinds of procedures are being introduced into TNTmips to assist you in producing better final total project results. If they are not everything you want in this area, let us know and we will work at it. However, please remember that TNTmips is a hybrid, cross platform product and not a Microsoft Windows product. Some of the things that are available for easy and automatic incorporation into true Windows products cannot currently be accomplished in the TNT products, such as the Window OLE concept, and will thus take some time and re-engineering.
Need for More Software?
Computer magazine writers are constantly claiming that many of the original and common computer products such as word processors, spread sheets, and so on are “topped out” and mature, and “oh whoa”, where will we turn for the next killer application to drive the computer hardware and software industry. Yet, these products still contain software errors which lose my work. Furthermore, these non-technical writing types have never tried to edit an existing complex CAD drawing or to produce a complex map. If they did, they would know why we need more computer cycles, drive space, screen area, printer resolution, and everything else.
Geospatial analysis software is in its infancy, and new demands upon it are made every day. The entire area of 3 or n-dimensional geospatial analysis with its attendant topological complexity is in its infancy. Certainly 3D geospatial analysis, web tunnel navigation, and the games our children now play all have a symbiotic future and require all the computer resources one can collect. In the simpler, current 2D world, the problems of conflation (merging together overlapping similar maps of varying date, quality, and similarity) are barely addressed.
Since geospatial analysis is barely defined and beginning, all its serious general purpose creators must continually develop, expand, and create new capabilities.
Software Quality?
State of the Industry?
Perfect software, not a chance! Nearly perfect, not much of a chance here either. Not in software in general, and certainly not in a broad based product in a rapidly evolving field such as geospatial analysis. The launches of Landsat 7, EO-1, and AM-11: at $2 billion, the biggest satellite platform in the EOS program, are all delayed another 6 months due to software errors. If you are looking for perfect software, give up now.
Simple word processors and Microsoft’s complex operating systems have significant errors in them. I encounter these errors daily if I do not remember to work around them. Nobody excuses them to me. In fact, I know in advance that I have no hope of getting an intermediate fix for them even if I thoroughly document and submit them. I, like you, have simply had to accept them as reality in a world filled with man-made objects. Unfortunately, we are continuing to lose ground in this battle. A recent feature editorial in PC Week addresses this topic: Attacking the Quality Monster, Microsoft reacts to outcry over buggy releases, patches, ISVs voice platform concerns, December 14, 1998, p18. It reports that testing labs are finding that Microsoft and other products are increasing in errors; not just total, but on a percentage basis. The following paragraphs in the article explain the general reasons.
“PC software bugs—or at least the percentage of bugs—are multiplying also because the expectations of users are changing. The average user is no longer likely to be an early adopter; someone who’s accustomed to figuring our the quirks of an immature product.”
“As PCs become appliances, the typical user has higher expectations for intuitive design and consistent behavior. When software fails to meet these expectations, companies incur high costs as workers spend their time in training classes or on hold for vendor technical support.”
“At the same time, the common mode of using PC software is evolving from brief work sessions to all-day 24-by-7 operation. Instead of starting an application, creating or editing a document or other work product, and closing the application, users are much more likely to be running a custom application that supports them throughout the workday. Subtle defects, such as cumulative leakage of memory and other resources, are more likely to surface under these conditions. Whether the platform be Windows CD or Windows NT, classes of software defects can surface that might have gone unnoticed in brief desktop sessions.”
“With the changing makeup of the user community, a more demanding environment and commercial incentives increasingly favorable to shipment of second-rate software, it’s no wonder that PC software quality is in crisis.”
“Will Microsoft and other vendors be able to stem the bug tide? It won’t be easy, at least in the short term. The challenge of software quality is different from other challenges, such as the sudden emergence of the Internet, that have faced PC software makers in the past. Quality is not a feature that can be added to a current product: It is a process, one that begins with product design and concludes long after the product is sold.”
Are Errors Deliberate?
This article also contains a table summarizing the approximate cost to correct software errors during the life of a product which can be summarized as follows:
$10 during requirements definition
$50 during design
$100 during programming
$250 during developer fixing
$500 during customer testing
$1600 when in service
Fortunately, such costs vary from product to product and company to company, primarily related to company size. But clearly, neither Bill Gates nor I really want to have errors in the software products we ship. Problem is, neither he nor I have figured out how to eliminate them. However, we both do get lots of advice on this matter. I know that I take errors in the TNT products personally, and the MicroImages staff all know how I feel about them. I also know that I am getting gray hairs from them. Complex software cannot be made error free by sheer will power or any amount of planning. It is the creation of a team of human beings working together, and each inevitably adds a little bit of something unanticipated to the final whole.
Problem is, humans create software. The human brain and reasoning processes are certainly far from perfect. Why should we expect that the software created by them, and seeking to replace them will be? In fact, most of the computer code which has been written is far more logical than human reasoning.
Perfection? This is something we can only strive for and asymptotically approach by our efforts. In the case of software, it is the combined efforts of client and software vendor, the policies of the software vendor, and the temperament of each client which set the location of this asymptotic goal for that client at perfection or way short of it. All software will have errors, it is how we work together to fix them that determines most of their impact. The biweekly upgrades on microimages.com help some of you a lot. However, they have to be used with care, as the fixing of a specific error can unmask or create other errors, and these biweekly upgrades cannot be extensively tested.
Need to Proceed Pragmatically.
MicroImages now has many clients around the world with different national cultures and personalities. I see and read a lot of the written communications with you. Most of you see the 99.99% of the things that are right in your software products in general and TNTmips in particular. You somehow circumvent the problems that you encounter or work with MicroImages to go through them and accomplish marvelous things we often did not dream of in creating the software. You get errors, get fixes, and get on with the job. But yes, there is also that .01% that let the problems they encounter stop them dead for whatever reason.
Periodically, MicroImages receives advice from one of you to slow down the upgrade cycle and check the products more thoroughly. It has been my observation, after presiding over the 45 releases of the TNT products over 12 years, that this would not necessarily help a great deal. I am not saying that steps cannot be taken to improve quality, merely that this is not particularly one of them. These kinds of complex software products are not necessarily improved by delays and further checking.
There are a million ways that one can “put the features together” in TNTmips. As you find errors in some of these combinations (obscure or prominent), they are patched. As the release period moves on, there are patches on patches, and the best solution is to release the next version to clean all this up. But, innovation is essential to compete and meet your requirements, so during that same period the software is altered. There is only one current version of the TNT products maintained, changed, and rebuilt nightly. It is impossible, for many technical reasons unique to MicroImages and the TNT product design, to retain and manage two versions. The result is that the quality of this evolving software is not necessarily proportional to the time spent in testing it, unless all alterations to this one version are halted.
How About Nearly Perfect?
All this is like the silly current practice of running around asking software vendors if their products are year 2000 compliant. Certainly, we can answer yes about the TNT products as we know what is inside of them. But, who knows if even the simple dates stored in attributes for geodata you purchase are expressed in a field as 98 or 1998? Of far more significance, we are directly dependent on the Y2K features in the operating systems we support, and current Windows products are not yet Y2K certified. Why do you think Bill Gates is now using the name W2000? To give us confidence? Or to get us all to buy that confidence during the next year while adding to his fortune?
Early cars had lots of parts which had to work together—and didn’t for long. I can remember my parents’ first new automobile, and it had plenty of defects. I remember my early cars and spending lots of time and money fixing their defects. It took half a century to get it right, with a little discipline introduced by Japanese manufactured cars in the 1960s and 1970s. They forced the U.S. auto manufacturers to work at getting it right. Cars still do the same things today, but no one can deny that they do them better each year. Features thought to be luxuries a couple of years back, such as positive traction, airbags, electronic control systems, and electronic door locks are now important to most of us and generally work well along with everything else in a new car—and for tens of thousands of miles.
Geospatial software development is now in the 1920s. We are not even sure if we are building the equivalent of a truck, car, airplane, or train, as the market has not yet made this clear. All we do know is that we are no longer using the equivalent of the GIS steam engine anymore. We also know that rapid innovation and good service is required to stay alive in the high technology business. So continue to tolerate and work with us on those errors which inevitably creep in as we strive to meet your rapidly expanding demands for new features.
MI/X (MicroImages’ X Server)
The MI/X server used with the MacOS 8.1 required minor modifications to run with the release of MacOS 8.5. These changes have been made, and the new version of MI/X is installed as part of V6.00 and is posted for anyone to download at microimages.com.
MI/X has been checked and works with early beta versions of W2000 (alias NT5.0).
Microimages.com now supports almost 2000 direct downloads of MI/X a week, up from 1400 a year ago. This is a total of about 100,000 downloads for the past year, up from 70,000 the previous year. In addition, there were 39 new mirror sites registered this quarter, bringing the total of registered, active mirror sites to 130 worldwide. All these mirror sites store and provide public access to MI/X. It is reasonable to project that between 0.5 and 1 million people have given MI/X a test run.
MicroImages is planning to release the source code to MI/X soon after V6.00 ships, as time will allow. It will be released as open source software along the same lines as LINUX, Netscape, and other software. MicroImages will remain the custodian of the source and master site for the release of new features.
The following is a sampling of the comments provided by users of MI/X.
From Chris Weaver at ctweaver@... on 20 June 1998
“I gotta write a real quick note to say thanks. I am very impressed with the quality of you x server. And just to let you know, I go to state [NC State University] and your company has a good name there because of this product. Thanks.”
From cagney@... on 22 June 1998
“Just a note to say I downloaded your x-server software for w95 today. I think it’s great, I’ve been looking for a way to unify the hose network, and you just provided that way. Thank you. I’ve kept a link to your site to see what else you are using this to bring over to the (*pew*) 95 market. The network model will rule the world!”
From Paul Gregg at pgregg@ti... on 22 July 1998
“Hi, I downloaded your free X-server today. Having been an X user for many years and recently been forced to use WinNT platform I’ve been looking around for Windows X-servers to display my Unix programs.”
“I must congratulate you on an excellent product—even better than all of the commercial servers I have tried.”
From Gatot Pramono at p2217069@... on 23 July 1998
“I am able to run UNIX based Arc/Info ver. 7.1 from Windows NT using MicroImages’ X window emulation software.”
From Erwin Bolwit at erwin@... on 23 July 1998
“This afternoon I downloaded MI/X from your server. I must say that I’m pretty amazed how smoothly it installs and runs for a free program made by one single company. The reason I downloaded it was that I wanted to test how well the newer Linux desktop system (RedHat fvwm2, KDE, Gnome)would run on it.”
“Most applications I tried run reasonably well and fast over a 10Mb full-duplex ethernet. But the desktop systems use some features that MI/X doesn’t understand. The one message I see most is that the SHAPE extension isn’t understood. I presume this is because MI/X supports X11R5 and this is an X11R6 command.”
“Given that the Win version was updated in March 1997, I presume you might have stopped developing the (free) version. As far as I know there is no OpenSource X server available for Windows and Macintosh platforms. All this is why I am asking you if you have considered or would consider the possibility of making the MI/X sources available under one of the established or your own open source license. As a reference you might look at Netscape’s website www.mozilla.org, containing the source of their web-browser, or read the popular piece by Eric Raymond, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, also available from the mozilla site. I think there are enough people interested in keeping the X server up-to-date, and if the license is open enough, this could probably be easily done by merging code from the UNIX free X server, XFree86 (www.xfree86.org). That way you would have the most up-to-date version of X available to provide to the clients of your other software.”
From Tim Tesh at tetesh@... on 24 July 1998
“Thanks for providing a free Xserver for Windows. Any chance that you will join the Open Source movement and publish the source for the Xserver. Seems like it would allow additional free advertisement. Seems like you would gain a lot of additional programmers to enhance your software. But I guess it might be a headache too.”
Windows 2000
V6.00 of the TNT products has been tested successfully with the beta version of W2000 (alias NT5.0).
Macintosh
One Step to Finder.
V5.90 required several mouse operations to switch from a TNT product to the Mac desktop or some other suspended program. This was not a typical operation of using the Finder to switch programs. MI/X has now been modified so that only a single mouse click can be used to toggle an active TNT product to the background and expose the Finder or some other suspended Mac program. To activate any program, simply select the desired program in the pull down menu at the right end of the MacOS toolbar. Your TNT product becomes active (takes over the screen) when “TNTx” is selected on this menu.
Speed and RAM Doubler.
Due to changes in MacOS 8.1 and MacOS 8.5, MicroImages now recommends against using Connectix’s Speed Doubler and Ram Doubler. They are no longer needed and may create difficulties in some situations. At this time, V6.00 has no known difficulties operating with any standard Mac extension. However, as always, fewer extensions means increased performance and fewer errors at the operating system level.
MacOS 8.5.
Minor modifications were made to MI/X to compensate for changes made in MacOS 8.5. You must use the new V6.00 MI/X to operate with this latest version of the Mac operating system.
Each time Apple has released a new MacOS version in this latest series (8.0, 8.1, 8.5, and earlier), they made claims about how each speeds up PowerMacs, especially those based on the G3 chip. Unfortunately, MicroImages has found that this is just Apple marketing hype. Each new MacOS released has performed approximately the same in terms of speed of operation of most commercial software, including the TNT products, on a particular Apple Mac.
Apple’s claims that the G3 300 MHz processor exceeds the performance of the Pentium II at 400 or 450 MHz are simply Apple marketing hype. Several benchmark reviews have been published in popular magazines, including those devoted only to Mac products. These have compared systems running real, high performance, benchmark applications such as PhotoShop, 3D visualizations, and so on. All these benchmark reports have shown that the G3/300 based Mac machines are at parity with about a 333 MHz Pentium II. MicroImages’ experience using the identical