TNT
Products V6.9
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| • DataTips | Add text styling and frame fill colors to substantially improve their appearance. |
| • GraphTips | Create graphical DataTips that will draw in (which means, pop in) graphical information |
| • Manifolds | Display 2D surfaces called manifolds in 3D views (for example, curved geologic profiles). |
| • Faster 3D Views | Faster variable triangulation of terrain surfaces is being added to 3D views. |
| • JPEG2000 | The latest JPEG2000 library is being integrated. |
| • OpenGIS Coordinates | ISO Standard 19111:2003 Reference Coordinate Specifications supported by the OpenGIS Consortium are being supported. |
| • OpenGIS WMS | TNTserver is being expanded to an OpenGIS Consortium Cascading Web Map Server. |
| • SVG layouts | Rendering to SVG adds interactive measurement tools and multiline, styled DataTips. |
If you wish to experiment with and use these in your advanced projects you can download DV7.0 now. Since these are prototype features, you may end up helping MicroImages debug them, but you also have the opportunity to contribute suggestions for possible improvements in them while they are receiving active attention and become part of the official release of RV7.0. It is often easier for a software engineer to respond to your suggestions when they are actively working on a project rather than when he/she has been given a priority on a new project for a new release.
As all these and other new other new features are added to DV7.0 new color plates will be posted on microimages.com. Until such plates appear, it is unlikely that any other additional written information on them will be available other than the introductory notes in this memo. Of course, as always, our software engineers are willing to help you if you have a specific question.
It is only human nature to criticize software faults and question why its manufacturer did not test it more thoroughly. On the other hand, it is naive to conclude that commercial software manufacturers from Microsoft on down ignore this aspect of software development. Those of us who pay for the development of commercial software products learn pretty fast that solving an error after a product is delivered costs 100 times more than finding and solving it on the originating programmer’s desk.
It is logical to wonder at this point why MicroImages software development engineers, most of whom each have at least 15 years experience writing the TNT code, simply can not do so without errors. That, of course, is not a realistic expectation as this is not a project of a single careful individual. Complex software is developed by many engineers on a day by day basis and evolves into place. It evolves as a very large, interrelated entity. Even perfect daily contributions from each team member can negatively impact on today’s work of someone else in the adjacent office or on code written years ago—all without any immediate manifestations.
Let’s put the overall situation in context. Many of you who communicated with MicroImages last year requested 1 new feature or improvement to be added to the TNT products. MicroImages encourages you to do this as these are treated as serious inputs to focus upon in the development of our products. In many cases the requested feature is of high priority to you and your project. A few of you then separately indicated that you wish MicroImages would not worry so much about adding new features and concentrate on making the products error proof. So what we have here is a conundrum. We receive hundreds of requests for new, useful, and interesting features, many of which are individually highly important to a specific client. Paralleling this is the separate recommendation that MicroImages stop adding new features and extensively test each product by following out its thousands of procedural threads. Obviously, all these requirements can not be met. Extensive time spent testing a complex, large software product can make it more reliable, but as soon as it is altered just to correct an error or add a feature to meet your individual requests, which are often excellent, all of those testing results are suspect and should be repeated.
So what to do? You can not halt forward progress and stay in business! Humans can not and will not do the repetitious testing required over and over! Software implementation causes errors many of which ripple out into unexpected areas! To address these, the strategy gradually instituted at MicroImages has been to implement as many daily automatic testing procedures as possible. Why do it daily? Because all the MicroImages products must be rebuilt overnight on every supported platform so that each day’s changes by all contributors are integrated together. This is then the basis for providing you with weekly integrated and comprehensive patches for the current version should you need them.
These are examples of the groups of nightly tests being performed with direct error reports sent to the responsible software engineer’s desk.
A large collection of complex map layouts are built and compared with the correct, stored output raster. A single complex layout can use many different object types and procedures. Layouts using non-English features are now being collected and added to this test set to help to track non-English text errors.
The library of all SML scripts is tested to see if they parse.
The SML scripts which can be automatically run without human input are run and checked nightly.
A collection of complex vector objects are validated.
Some TNT processes, such as the Spatial Data Editor, are highly interactive with their operator. Furthermore, they provide many different interactive tools, which can be applied in a myriad of different orders. Since the Editor is difficult to automatically test, the first step was to provide it with good backup procedures in V6.7 and V6.8. Now automated tests of various vector operations are being devised to monitor these activities embedded in the Editor and in related TNT processes. Fortunately, other “batch” oriented testing such as map layouts and vector validation also check these important operations in these products.
At the moment the nightly testing is being expanded to handle 3 versions at once: the previous release (latest PV6.8), the current release (latest PV6.9), and DV7.0. These have to be tested on various platforms (Windows, Mac … 32-bit, 64-bit and so on). Recently most staff computers have been equipped with Purify, an expensive IBM product that must be purchased individually for each machine to build debugging versions of all these TNT processes. This enables processes with built in debugging to be used the next day by the development and support engineers to help track down our problems. Unfortunately, processes built with Purify take 10 to 20 times longer to build and then equally long to run so all processes have to be built with and without Purify.
All of this, together with the nightly builds of all these products, requires extensive overnight computer processing resources. As a result, considerable recent effort has been invested in writing a network management system to use many of the MicroImages computers for an overnight distributed processing system for these builds and tests. Now all our staff desktops and many other computers are left on at night for this purpose. This central management service sends out the next test to each available machine that reports in as ready and suitable for a task. The individual machine then finds the appropriate test software, TNT process(es), and test data somewhere on the network, runs the task, and reports back the results to the proper destination such as the software engineer responsible for that program. This in turn puts a lot of demand for bandwidth on the intranet, which has to be upgraded to handle these requirements.
These activities are reviewed here to assure you that errors, preventing them, and getting you timely patches are important to MicroImages. What is necessary is to develop a scheme that can monitor software health and quality while new features are being added. Please also understand that this is accomplished at considerable expense in terms of human capital, delays, and fewer new features. Please also understand that priorities assigned to the new feature you request are directly under my control. As a result I make daily decisions with regard to which new features will do the most for the most existing users and enable our products to remain competitive while also allocating the same human capital to error management and approaches to reduce errors.
At this time all of MicroImages’ software support engineers hold formal university degrees in computer science. Thus you are communicating directly, free-of-charge with a computer professional who knows about software, programming, networks, systems, and the operation TNT products, but is not a geospatial analyst or professional in some application area.
Gradually, over the years, the technical range and complexity of geospatial analysis and, thus, the TNT professional products has increased. As a result, your questions have been requiring more and more technical expertise to answer. A good example is the continuing increasing proportion of your questions related to your use of SML, TNTserver setup, TNTsdk, interfaces to Visual Basic and so on. These are questions best addressed by computer science professionals and you are being provided with that kind of support. Correspondingly, more geospatial technicians are being graduated or self taught and employed as this professional activity expands to mainstream. This also increases the complexity of operational oriented TNT questions and correspondingly decreases the number of your application questions.
Please also remember that, by policy, MicroImages does not do applications in competition with you, we do the software you use. Thus, MicroImages is generally staffed by computer specialists who are not trained as you are in the application of geospatial analysis. They are more than happy to receive your application questions on how to go about applying a TNT product to a given task or series of tasks from a technical viewpoint. However, they can not readily answer your questions about project design in your or your client’s professional area of expertise (for example, city and transportation planning, archaeology, mineral exploration, meteorology, coastal studies, and so on).
We occasionally get inquires from clients along the line of “how do I apply my TNT product to this proposed river management project,” or to “a watershed management project,” or “to compete for this city infrastructure management GIS system,” and so on. MicroImages support engineers can not help you at all in these areas and refer them to others here. Obviously those of us who are experienced in geospatial project design are going to need quite a bit of information and adequate time to discuss and to answer these kinds of questions.
Another kind request is to “provide information on who else is using a TNT product” in a specific application area. A good example of this was the request today of a potential client in the U. S. Navy asking who he could talk to about using TNTmips for extracting a DEM from underwater stereo photographs. Fortunately, we did know of a U.S. client in Florida who has been experimenting with this for years. While these requests are reasonable the principal problem in answering them is that MicroImages does not know what 90% of our clients are specifically doing with our products. As a result, this kind of question usually can not be satisfactorily answered. Our clients are scattered around the world in a hundred nations. They are uncomfortable or cannot communicate with us in English and only work directly with our Resellers. About all we know is the general area of their organization’s activity (for example, agriculture, forestry, map making, and so on) from their registration form.
When you contact MicroImages’ software support engineers for help, you will always get answers even though initially they may not be what you want as they may not be able to understand your inquiry, reproduce your problem, or make decisions about what you want added to the TNT products. Many problems require a back and forth dialog before they can be understood and the proper solution proposed.
Fortunately, MicroImages does have some very experienced Resellers, Geospatial Consultants, and professional clients who understand geospatial applications in various professional fields and how to use the TNT products in them. They can help you with project design and training in our own language and local setting. However, please expect to pay them as appropriate for their efforts.
One simple MicroImages resource that I feel could help many of you is the use of Google to perform searches restricted to microimages.com for a topic of current interest, to research various TNT features, or to simply figure out how to do something. All you have to do is “let your fingers do the talking and the walking” by pushing the SEARCH button at www.microimages.com/search/. This brings you up the familiar Google Advanced Search form, which is preset to restrict your search to only the material they have cataloged for microimages.com.
MicroImages has carefully insured that the text content of every one of the 76 Tutorials and Reference Booklets, the text in every one of the approximately 500+ color plates, the reference manual, and the content of every one of these 54 MEMOS is on microimages.com in a form that is completely indexed by Google. Linked to, or embedded in the PDFs of these text materials are all the associated color illustrations. This same procedure is also followed for every new color plate added during the next development of the next version (for example, DV7.0) and any new or updated tutorials are also immediately posted, sometimes even in incomplete form.
All these materials provide you with at least 10,000 pages of text and many thousands of associated illustrations at your finger tips. The only caution is that some of these materials are older, but even then are useful to clarify a point as long as the assumption is not made that the TNT products still implement the concept or application, especially the user interface, in exactly that form.
Typically Google crawls and reindexes well over 1 gigabyte of text material on microimages.com at least once a month. Therefore, on the average your searches are up-to-date to within 2 weeks of the latest written materials released via microimages.com. For example, it is likely that the contents of this MEMO will already be indexed by Google for searching by the time you read this—so try a search on some unique phase herein.
I use this Google site search daily as I think of this collection of materials as my large filing system of all the permanent TNT product formal reference materials. During the writing of this MEMO, I consulted it very frequently to check a color plate or tutorial to review, and sometimes understand what had been accomplished in RV6.9. Often 2 well chosen words, when restricted to microimages.com in this site search, provide me a reasonably short list of references on the topic of interest. I can then locate the specific item and use the Google link to review it.
I often have a good idea of just which 2 or 3 words to try since I am quite familiar with the reasonably standardized terminology used in these written materials. This should not discourage you, as it only means I get to what I want sooner. With a little practice and thought, you will also get familiar with how things are expressed and can be located. All these documents are written as technical reference materials. They usually employ carefully selected terminology and repeat the same term over and over to avoid possible confusion in your understanding of what is meant. And, of course, you can always ask the software support engineers for the appropriate search terms, which will often lead you to more information on your topic than they could directly provide you, especially the illustrated materials.
A good source of the terminology used in these written materials is the new reference booklet released with RV6.9 entitled Glossary for Geospatial Science. It will be of special assistance to help non-native speakers of English select search terms and phases. Over the next couple of months MicroImages will investigate how we can assist you further in choosing what you enter into this Google site search to retrieve the references on your topic of interest.
For example, perhaps this glossary with additions can be added to this search area on microimages.com to assist you in a more direct fashion in entering your search terms. Often you can also remember something about how a feature or concept was previously presented in our written material, such as in a color plate. It may be possible to further restrict your site search to specific groups of materials, such as only color plates, only tutorials, only these release MEMOs, and so on. It may not be possible to confine your search to a date range since periodically these materials are rearranged or revised and, thus, Google assigns a new and current date to them. Watch this search area of microimages.com for these developments and come back with any ideas you have, keeping in mind that we can not readily change or humanly cross-reference over 10,000 pages.
Hardware News
nVidia Fights Back. by Dave Salvator. PC Magazine. June 30, 2003. page 38.
This review compares the performance of the most recent nVidia display board (GeForce FX 5900 Ultra) with the most recent ATI board (Radeon 9800 Pro).
Fresh Ideas in Databases. by Bill Machrone. PC Magazine. February 12, 2002. page 57.
While this editorial is a bit dated, it provides some useful insight into how and why database software is evolving.
Tough Choices: Ruggedized Notebooks. by Jim Engelhardt. Geospatial Solutions. May 2003. pages 42-43.
“It’s a rough world out there. To protect your hardware and data investments, durable notebook computers are essential for withstanding the harsh environments encountered during mobile mapping and GIS data collection.”
Low Cost GPS.
MicroImages periodically receives questions about which GPS system to use. RV6.9 provides a simple procedure for orthoimage production from IKONOS and QuickBird images supplied with Rational Polynomial Coefficients (RPCs). As a result you may become interested in determining which GPS device and approach to use for collecting Ground Control Points (GCPs) of suitable accuracy for this satellite image rectification. MicroImages as a software company has little field experience with these devices and the correct solution and the accuracy that can be achieved in your area varies widely around the world. These questions are best answered by those who have experience in collecting field data in your area of interest.
If you are interested in low-cost GPS units that are convenient to use with TNTatlas on Tablet PCs or similar applications please review the following sites and devices. Whether or not they produce adequate accuracy for your application is a matter for you to determine. If good supporting material is available (which means, high resolution airphotos for marking GPS point locations in the field) and a large number of GCPs are collected with access to the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) correction signals, these or similar GPS devices could be used to collect the control points for this TNT rectification procedure. On the other hand, fewer GCPs are required if survey accuracy GCPs are collected and can be very accurately located in the satellite image (for example, use high resolution airphotos for locating points in the field).
DeLorme.
The Earthmate GPS Receiver from DeLorme at www.delorme.com is a $130 unit the size of a matchbox and has a USB cable interface or can be adapted for wireless using Bluetooth. With either interface, it can be mounted on a vehicle roof or atop a staff to get it above your body and nearby obstructions thus “seeing” more satellites. It can also provide improved accuracy by acquiring the WAAS satellite’s GPS position correction signals for the United States including Alaska, most of Mexico, and southern Canada (www.nstb.tc.faa.gov/vpl.html). The European equivalent of WAAS, called European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), is scheduled to become available this year.
PHAROS Science and Applications, Inc.
The PHAROS USB Connected GPS Receiver and the GPS Receiver with Bluetooth Wireless Technology at www.pharosgps.com are quite similar devices in size and functionality to the DeLorme products outlined above.
Software News
MrSID – LizardTech.
LizardTech, Inc. To be Acquired by Celartem Technology USA, Inc. Directions Magazine. Press Release. 20 June 2003. For details see
www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/index.php?duty=Show&id=7328.
Some highlights:
“LizardTech, Inc. employs 29 people and is being acquired for US$11.25 million in cash. [at its peak LizardTech employed 150 staff and various sources indicate that LizardTech has had US$45 to $50 million in outside capital over the past 11 years.” [for example see seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/liza20.shtml]
“Celartem Technology USA, Inc. is wholly owned by Japan’s Celartem Technology, Inc. which provides digital image and secure content distribution solutions. The addition of LizardTech’s core technology and applications further Celartem’s vision to consolidate and develop technology to simplify and enhance the creation, management, control and distribution of digital content.”
BREAKING NEWS: Mapping Science, Inc. no longer exists.
GeoJP2 - Mapping Science.
Effective 12 February the URL link to www.mappingscience.com points to a web page being maintained by LizardTech as follows.
“By now you’ve probably heard that LizardTech has obtained the assets of Mapping Science, Inc. This action is a result of a settlement in LizardTech’s ongoing lawsuit for claims against Mapping Science for misappropriation of trade secrets. Mapping Science has ceased operations and LizardTech will support Mapping Science customers going forward.”
The page continues on with additional information related to this topic.
Additional rumors on this topic can be found at www.lbszone.com/features/
lizardtech_msi/ a portion of which are as follows.“The ‘skinny’ on the suit. LizardTech entered into litigation as a result of six former LizardTech employees who founded Mapping Science. The findings of the settlement established that there existed a misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of NDA's the employees had with LizardTech. Mapping Science will cease to exist as a company and all of its assets will be turned over to LizardTech. During the transition it is expected that some MS employees will be retained as consultants by LizardTech in order to facilitate a "smooth" transition and to continue supporting customers that may be affected. Documentation (such as the GeoJP2™ file specification) and other material that may have been previously available for download/access via Mapping Science's website may not be available in the short-term, however, information can be obtained by contacting GeoJP2fileformat@lizardtech.com. Developers and software vendors will be pleased to know that LizardTech is currently working on a software development kit that will enable support for MrSID® and JPEG 2000, within a single SDK... stay tuned!”
LizardTech’s official statement on this topic can be read at www.lizardtech.com/
solutions/ms/msfaq.php.
Global Reference Geodata
Your RV6.9 kit contains a DVD providing Global Reference Data in RVC format and illustrated in synoptic form on the attached color plate entitled Global Data Sets. These data sets were derived from the Visible Earth, VMap0, and GTOPO30 data, each of which is described in more detail below. This new geodata set is provided as a bonus feature for those who have purchased RV6.9 or later of their TNT product. As a result the Project Files provided on this DVD will not work in any earlier version of a TNT product.
The global geodata provided on this DVD originated in the public domain as reviewed below. Since these digital geodata sets were originally created and distributed in the public domain, MicroImages hereby declares that they remain in the public domain including this DVD and products derived from the geodata it contains. You are free to export and use the geodata on this DVD in any way you desire without restrictions.
Disclaimer: Since MicroImages did not create this data, it has no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the geodata on this DVD.
Each of the three data sets included on the DVD (World 1 km Color Image, World 1:1,000,000 Map Features, and World 1 km Elevation) have been converted to single global layers georeferenced to latitude/longitude, centered on the Greenwich meridian. During this conversion, each original data set was subjected to extensive TNT processing into the appropriate TNT object types.
Image and Elevation. The image and elevation data were assembled and mosaicked to a common cell size, pyramided, and JPEG2000 compressed into 2 matching raster objects.
Map Features. The VMAP0 feature data started out as a ridiculous 129,588 files organized into 23,696 folders. It was reorganized into 10 TNT Project Files each containing several global vector objects of a common theme (for example, various hydrographic layers all in 1 Project File, boundaries in another Project File, transportation, elevation, industry, physiography, population, utilities, vegetation, and data quality in others). During this conversion extensive improvement and reorganization of these originally unmanageable data structures were performed using various TNT processes. These included:
filtering out extraneous elements (for example, removing grid lines from feature layers),
complete