19 June 1997

Following are some of the positive, written comments to MicroImages during the last quarter exactly as received except for the [edit] alterations in [brackets] to keep them anonymous. Many more comments are received by MicroImages by voice but cannot be reproduced here verbatim as quotes. Please note that these quotations are not edited from their original form in spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.

Email from somebody at an AT&T net site on 18 March 1997.

"I love your page."

Extracted from email from a US client on 24 March 1997.

"I’ve just received my copy of TNTmips v5.5 - what a relief! I’ve been using it for a week and have been very impressed - it’s great. I’ve a couple of queries that you may be able to help me with:" [continues on with questions]

Extracted from email from a US client on 25 March 1997.

"We run both 5.1 and 5.5 versions but I use 5.1 most. [?] What I’m concerned is the attached attribute database, i.e. PAT for polygons, because all my vector objects came from ArcInfo format. To edit on screen, vector or raster, TNTmips is much better than PC ArcInfo. However, I still need to convert TNTmips objects to normal ArcInfo coverage sometimes."

Extracted from email from a US student on 25 March 1997.

"Hi! I’m a student using the TNTlite software package on a PowerComputing PowerCenter 132."

"I discovered that the KeyAccess extension which allows us to access applications from the school’s main fileserver slowed TNTlite down an *incredible amount. My redraw/initialization time went down from 1 minute 10 seconds to 4 seconds without the KeyAccess."

"This problem probably doesn’t come up to often, but I thought I’d pass the note along just in case."

[KeyAccess is some software used by network system managers to maintain and monitor software licenses.]

Extracted from email from an Indonesian client on 2 April 1997.

"TNTmips is running very well and has started earning its keep for us. Our clients are quite impressed with what we are now able to do. But we need help with a few topics." [continues on with some suggestions for improvements]

Extracted from email from an international MicroImages Dealer on 9 April 1997.

[from a discussion of a competition with ERDAS at an Arc/Info site contemplating adding image processing capability]

"I would love to be a fly on the wall just to see what in is happening in this Department! There is obviously a lot of positioning, lobbying, justifying and soul searching happening as they cannot make a decision on this. In fact I think he mentioned that they have got a consultant in to look at the options. From [a name’s] comments to me there is a great deal of pressure not to buy a system which has the potential to replace an existing system which has been put in place at great expense, i.e. Arc/Info potentially being replaced by TNTmips. But on the other side of the coin, how can you justify supporting a system at around 5-6 times the cost of another system which will handle the existing work and more easily! I’d say there is a war going on between the people with the purse strings - admin and the scientists operating Arc/Info."

"This is the war that [a name] is fighting and one in which he says he has no friends left at his workplace. In fact when I last spoke to him you could tell that he was on the defensive even before I had said anything. His directive is to streamline and cut costs in the computing and GIS areas. More specifically = ‘phase out Arc/Info for a much cheaper alternative’. They are converting all the computing to Windows NT on Pentiums. Currently they spend $50,000 per year on Arc/Info maintenance for 16 seats which has to be cut. Compare that to TNTmips maintenance - much more attractive!! $50,000 seems to be the magic number for Arc/Info sites - similar to [another city]. It just seems to be a matter of time although Arc does run on NT doesn’t it?? and maybe cheaper maintenance??"

Email from a purchaser of TNTlite in Sri Lanka on 10 April 1997.

"I received your CD-ROM and the literature. I do not know how to thank you regarding this matter. It is a great pleasure to inform you that TNT products have a very good customer support. I received more details from India from [a Dealer’s name] also since you informed them. Thank you very much for it. I feel that I am not alone with my new interest on TNTmips. I will be in touch with you."

Extracted from a FAX from an international client on 11 April 1997.

"Some additional information that may also be of interest to you is the General Protection Fault problem we were experiencing in TNTmips of which I advised you previously. Our cure that we thought we had found did not work entirely (the GPF’s still occurred although were infrequently). It seems that the problem lies within Windows NT v4.00 or the Network Client we are using (most probably the latter). Up until recently the only time this GPF occurred was when TNTmips was being used. However a new version of Microsoft Project was recently installed on one of out NT machines, and low and behold, the same GPF problem occurred! It seems there must be a process within TNTmips and Microsoft Project that triggers this GPF (no fault of either of these packages!). I am going to get our computer people to talk to Novell and Microsoft to get their views on the subject and will let you know of the outcome. It is possible (and probable) this problem is also linked with the type of hardware we are using - more details later. Cheerio for now!"

A letter from Barcelona, Spain on 15 April 1997.

"I send you my request for a copy of TNTlite. I was talking with my class colleagues (Master in Remote Sensing, IEEE - Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, Barcelona, SPAIN) and we are ten people interested in a copy of TNTlite. The problem is that not every [one] has the same computer."

"If possible I want 10 CD’s of TNTlite distributed as the following: [a breakdown of platforms followed]. If it is not possible, then send me 10 copies for PC Pentium and Windows 95."

An email exchange with a TNTlite client in Texas on 14 -15 April 1997.

[Statement] "I just wanted to let you know, as a Mac user, that I greatly appreciate MicroImages commitment to the platform and hope that it continues to develop and upgrade TNT products for the Macintosh. I realize Apple is in trouble right now, but I, one among many, am a loyal fan of theirs and look forward to using your products on the Mac OS. I just ordered TNTlite and hope to order full featured products in coming months. Keep the Mac alive! It’s still a great computing environment. Hope you don’t take offense to this message."

[Response from MicroImages’ Software Support team] "Have no fear, MicroImages has no plans to abandon the Mac. We have several Mac fans on staff and in management. I’m sure that you’ll find TNTlite to be a robust and capable software package. Please visit our web site at www.microimages.com to look at some of our ‘Getting Started’ manuals that are designed to help you get to know our software. If you have any questions, feel free to drop tech support some e-mail."

[Response] "Thanks for the message [a name]. I look forward to using TNTlite now and other TNT products in the future."

Email from somebody on 1 April 1997.

"Impressive webpage! We’ll be in contact."

Extracted from email from a client in France on 17 April 1997.

"I work with TNT since 1996 now, and I think that TNT is a very good product. Their are lots of options to make matters easier the work. It’s a very good GIS, and you can do all what you want with vector datas (at this day I don’t know all the possibilities of TNTmips). There is no bug and it’s pleasant to work on TNT."

"The only problem I had with TNT is about mosaic process. I have problem with color matching: sometimes good, sometimes not." [continues on with details]

[This client was using V5.60. A completely new mosaic process is released in V5.70 with better methods for color marching each frame.]

Extracted from a FAX from an international Dealer on 22 April 1997.

"V5.60 can drape vectors (CB_SOILS, hydrology, etc.) on 3D. MicroImages made great progress."

"I bought PPC 604e, 225Mhz(MacOS 7.5.5). I found TNTmips runs quite comfortably."

Extracted from email from an international Dealer on 23 April 1997.

"I just called one of our clients who has [a] some problems with some RAM error. [continues on to describe problem] Afterwards we had an information exchange about one hour about your really fine software products and come to the conclusion, nobody should pay [for] another one! Congratulations form us, [a name] and from our several clients."

Extracted from a FAX from an international Dealer on 23 April 1997.

"Free TNTatlas - Hallelujah! I assume this means that any version of TNTatlas will be available for mastering onto CD with no limitations of object size etc. In many respects for a company such as [a name] this is a better marketing tool than TNTlite. It means we can get real data into companies in a TNT format, which gives us a foot in the door to sell full systems." [responding to a preliminary brief announcement that TNTatlas software in all forms is free]

"Getting Started booklets - Again a great idea, a comment from a new TNT user here at [a name] was ‘I could have done with the georeferencing one a week ago’."

"Out of curiosity mostly being somewhat of a LINUX enthusiast, I loaded the LINUX version of TNTmips on our LINUX box. The box is a 486DX2/66 with 20MB of RAM and is used as an Internet router. After a few problems loading it off the CD, mostly to do with the way the CD was mounted, I got I running fine using a serial key. Given that the box is a 486, I was most impressed by the display performance, especially rendering 3D views, I can remember the days when Crow Butte took 4 minutes on a Pentium." [LINUX uses its own X Server like any other workstation, so the interface and display-oriented processes are fast.]

Extracted from a FAX from an international Dealer on 27 April 1997.

"Note - the TNTmips 5.6 (TNTview) has great easy-access tools for simple statistics in the manipulation of tables, as well as great report-like tables which can be exported or saved to many database softwares. You save me a lot of work!"

Email from a client in Angola on 25 April 1997.

"I installed version 5.6 of TNTmips this week and have to congratulate MicroImages once again for an excellent effort to keep us up to date in the GIS world. You just don’t know what you’re doing to my social life..."

[A paragraph follows on the status of their subscription.]

"Another query is more hardware directed. Could you suggest a suitable laptop for using with TNTview? We envisage a geologist working in the filed with a laptop and TNTview, perhaps linked to the main office database. Quarterly upgrade memos generally mention desktop PC’s, but with the current generation of laptops one should have no trouble running TNTview on them." [The MicroImages MEMO will now carry a recommendation for an entry level and the "Cadillac" or top-of-the-line portable to run the TNT products. An increasing number of clients in geology and related field oriented disciplines are taking TNTview into the field.]

Extracted from email from an international Dealer on 30 April 1997.

"Another thing I want to report you are my experiences on a presentation this Monday at [an agency]. It is one of the parts of Geological Survey in [a nation] and about 1200 people are working at that site. Their major activities lie in some resource activities and they work worldwide in different states [i.e. countries]. At [this site] they use about ten ARC/Info licenses. One of them has seen TNTmips in Chile and made a contact to me to get more information about TNTmips."

"On Monday I got the chance to make a presentation to about 15 specialists and show the possibilities of TNTmips. I think they were very impressed. For the presentation it was very helpful to me to use the new Getting started booklets. I can just go through of some of them during the presentation (2 hours) and they worked very well. It was a very good decision of MicroImages to produce this booklets even if somebody has no experiences in GIS they were very helpful to come in this business. Congratulations to MicroImages!!"

"The other thing which was very nice is, that most of the people there compared TNTmips to ArcView, because of the comparable prices (in their calculations they have to pay for ArcView and additional modules needed to get ArcInfo as a really GIS about 8000$). But my contact person at [the site] always expressed, that they don’t have to compare ArcView and TNTmips - they have to compare Arc/Info and TNTmips!!!"

"After the presentation I handed two TNTlite kits and one B CD (now they can put TNTlite to their UNIX-Server) to my contact person and he came in a big stress because everyone wants to have one of the CDs and especially a set of the getting started booklets. It is a pleasure for me to present your software and the philosophy behind TNTmips to potential customers!!!"

[continued on other topics]

Email from an international address on 28 April 1997.

[There is no dealer in this nation. This party had not received any mailed information on TNTmips or TNTlite. They may have visited microimages.com.]

"We are a leading Construction and Development firm that has been accomplishing tasks for the Government of [a nation]. We have been looking for new working areas of study for a better and brighter future of our firm. According to our recent research and the demands from the Governmental Institutes that we have been working for, we have decided to enter the newly developing sector of the Geographical Information Systems and Database Management."

"The sector of Geographical Information Systems has been developing for 3 years and has just produced its market. On the other hand, we see that the sector has not been fully advanced and new developments required on the areas that have not yet been fully satisfied. At this point, we have decided to set up a new firm, which would meet the demands and we have transferred some of the key personnel from the leading firms from the sector of Geographical Information Systems. We built our technical, social and marketing infrastructure, including support from Urban and Regional Planning Department of the [a name] Technical University. Finally we are looking for a powerful software that would cover our requirements. These requirements will be detailed in the following sections of this paper."

"First of all, we would like to reflect the past, the possible future and the supply-demand activities of the sector."

"The history of GIS [in this nation] started with the demands of Governmental Institutions and now, the greater part of the market is represented by Municipalities. There are 3 foreign products developed and competing in the sector. These products are Arc-Info, Genasys and Intergraph. There are also two minor low-priced domestic solutions (NetCAD and CartoCad). As the cost-benefit ratios of the domestic products are high, they seem to be more popular at the sector. Through our experiences we have discovered the following benefits and handicaps of these products:"

"Arc-Info and Intergraph are the oldest softwares in the sector. However, their organizations defects led them fail in developing applications that would satisfy the demand in the sector. Because of this reason, despite the power and the popularity of the softwares, they have an image as non user-friendly and hard to learn softwares. This is also because of the incapability of these softwares at customization of [a nation’s] laws and regulations (They are poor in creating new symbology, user-demanded applications). Arc-Info is popular at governmental applications like producing maps and large scaled planning activities. On the contrary, at low-scaled site, Intergraph and Genasys take part in municipal applications. Especially Genasys seems to compensate a part of the demand at the market with its powerful open structure and easy to use scripting and interface programming utilities. On the contrary, Genasys has the lack of ready to serve programs and applications. In order to satisfy a demand, a new customization is needed and this increases the time cost of the projects. Intergraph, with Microstation and MGE, and Arc-Info with Arc-View are serving quicker and more standardized products to the market. At this point, we have to stress that these benefits and the handicaps of these software are related to the technical staff of their [a nation’s] resellers and developers."

"From our point of view, the further potentials of the GIS market will be municipal applications (Digital data production and management ?graphic and non graphic-, raster to vector conversion, topological query and display, shortest path analysis, location analysis, buffer and overlay analysis, etc.), regional applications including remote sensing, GPS integrated solutions?."

"Being aware of the demands of the market and the solutions of the leading firms, we have decided that a software covering the following requirements would lead us to become a competitive firm at the GIS market."

"Windows NT and/or Windows 95 support.

Raster to Vector conversion.

Heads-up digitizing.

An internal or an integrated powerful CAD utility.

COGO functions.

Topology creation, building and cleaning functions.

Support for different projection systems (UTM, ...etc.).

Powerful symbology creation:

Creation of custom line types,

Area fill pattern creation support, and

Point symbology creation.

Editing and drawing with or without symbology.

Large digital data processing capability (line, point, polygon).

Scaled plotting ability to custom sizes.

Open system for producing modified applications (customizing standard applications), integrated design options for creating 32-bit custom interfaces, internal commands and pre-defined functions must be used in customized interfaces.

An advanced scripting, macro language or Visual Basic support for customization of interfaces and preparing add-on utilities.

External database support (or a Built in Database that would support up to 5,000,000 rows).

Database sharing in multi-user environments.

[Local language] character and font support for applications, interfaces and messages, as a package without [our nation’s] menus and user interfaces can never be competitive in the market.

Capability of using raster images at background in the process of vector editing, design, planning and final product displaying phases.

Functions of Edge matching, coordinate transformation, coordinating raster images, tag editing, TIN and DTM creation, continuous graphic database for CAD utilities.

Functions of zoning, overlay, buffer, proximity, shortest path, and district analysis for query and display utilities."

"A software which would cover the above abilities and functions may lead us to become a leader in the [nation’s] GIS market. We would also be glad to be the Local Distributor of such a software."

"We are looking forward to get a quick response about your product, pointing to each of the technical requirements, to the following address:"

[MicroImages was pleased to respond with the information required and that TNTmips satisfied almost every requirement stated.]

Email from a TNTlite client in Australia on 6 May 1997.

"I have just received your TNTlite page [kit]. Thanks for the speedy response. I’m looking forward to installing it and having a play. It looks like a fun package and ideal for what I want to do, which is to analyze the cloud cover over a 16 x 16 km test area in South West of Western Australia."

"The data source is about 100 NOAA 11 images. This is an extension of my honors project. I originally wrote an analysis package in IDL..... I wish I had known about TNTlite being available! :-) Anyhow, thanks again."

Email from a TNTlite client in Zambia on 9 May 1997.

"I am writing to confirm that I have received a copy of TNTlite 5.6 and accompanying booklets on 7 May 97. It is already making wonders in my research work. I can only hope that some day we can have access to the Professional products to enhance our training and research in GIS and Remote Sensing. Please consider us whenever you distribute ‘free’ TNT products to academic institutions. Thank you very much for your product."

Extracted from a FAX from an international Dealer on 10 May 1997.

"If I sound over confidential about [our] ability to take on the rest of the industry it is because we are the only business that shares MicroImages holistic view of GIS. We believe that Image Processing, Cartography, Photogrammetry, Mapping and Data Management are all part of GIS in addition to the Management Systems that most people think of when they hear the term GIS. This is why we went with TNTmips. Even [another company], our main competition are forced to bring work to us on occasion, while the only work we out-source is large format scanning and laminating."

Extracted from email from a client in Great Britain on 12 May 1997.

[This individual client is with an international corporation with offices all around the world. This corporation is making extensive use of Arc/Info and ERMapper in their current operations. This is their first TNTmips purchased as V5.50 about six months ago. In this email, he is discussing with software support a problem encountered in adding another 9 gigabyte hard disk onto his NT based PC system for TNTmips.]

"By the way, it may interest you to know that one of the 9Gb disks [added to the PC] was taken off my (ERMapper and ArcView 3.0-equipped-) SGI Indigo-2 (I couldn’t justify the additional expense of a TNT license for the SGI, sadly), as I tend to do the majority of my work using TNT, which is generating a lot of interest in the staff here."

[Hooray, Great, Excellent, Finally! This is the ultimate insult to workstations, pull their peripheral and put it on a PC. Someone who knows chooses the easiest way to get the job done. Here we see some of the very first hints of a trend to move from expensive GIS and IPS software on an expensive workstation platform to less expensive, integrated software on a fast PC. Do we finally see a chink in the wall labeled "getting the most productive work accomplished for the least amount of effort"?]

Email from a client at a university in the US on 21 May 1997.

"Today demo’d TNTlite to 6 people from backgrounds, some off campus."

"In an hour I demo’d the following: Raster, Vector, and Database display. Dynamic map abstraction. Route analysis. Region of Interest creation. Automatic classification. Subset classification by ROI. Raster to Vector conversion of the result. Style editing of Vector for transparency effect."

"Typical questions were asked. How much, what platform, what operating system. General comment was that the X Window interface and data encapsulation via the RVC file makes for easy portability."

"A little more interesting were the questions about the learning curve. We all agreed that a GUI interface makes for a fast ramp up. I pointed out the on-line tutorials and the MS Word *.doc files which were available. This in reference to the recent comparison in which the documentation for TNT was called into question. I did not recommend using Display/Documentation."

"Of more particular interest were the cons discussed. The friendliness for the casual user was called into question, in comparison to ArcView. Bottom line was that finding typical functions is much easier with Display/Spatial Data than in ArcView. The terminology is more in line with the user community (e.g. Vector, not Arc as in Arc/Info, Raster, not Grid as in Arc/Info)."

"The utility of having to another package, in regard to the defacto standards of Imagine and Arc/Info, was called into question. I drew an inverted triangle on the board and divided it into four levels. At the top is the end user (manager, etc.). Next was the technical worker (geomatic scientists, computer scientist, etc.) Next was Arc/Info and Imagine (the tools). At the bottom was TNT (the hybrid tool)."

"Using directional arrows I drew a path from top to bottom on the left side, then bottom to top on the right, addressing each layer in turn, with the following explanation:"

"The end user communicates a need to the technical worker who may use Arc/Info and Imagine to perform Vector and Raster Imports of data from other organizations and perform strictly vector and raster manipulations. Hybrid analysis is accomplished via TNT (which can read/write in the other package’s formats). The final maps, interfaces, and output data are created and passed out of Arc/Info and Imagine, through the tech worker back to the end user."

"My bottom line argument is: we need TNT as another tool in our geomatics toolbox. It is not a replacement, but a compliment to the defacto standards. As a hybrid GIS, it frees the user to commit more time to the semantics of geomatics instead of the syntax of the tool."

"Finally, all of the 40 demo packages [actually TNTlite] packages have been distributed. I’ve encouraged everyone to ‘play around with it’ this summer, and e-mail me with particular ‘how to questions’. I have offered the use of my full license here, under my direction and care, to subset large Arc/Info and Imagine datasets so they can conceptualize their geomatic analyses within TNTlite by using data relevant to their particular interests. At the beginning of next summer I’d like to have another get together, but this time more of a user’s workshop."

"Thank you for all your support this year. I hope to have some company on campus next year (i.e. I am a lonely TNT user here!). Cheers."

Extracted from a FAX from an international Dealer on 20 May 1997.

"V5.60. Whenever a new release comes out, I drop everything to read the Memo, and Grapevine etc., plus install this new version to check out the features. I really don’t know how you do it all! This version is so packed with useful features that have been on my personal wish list for a while. V5.5 impressed, V5.6 is even more impressive - with continued development like this, a TNTmips user is guaranteed to always have the finest spatial analysis system available."

"TNTlite. Since TNTlite is free and is widely circulated on the NET and by other means, we have been reproducing our own CD-ROMS here at [a name] for those requesting a copy. I trust that this is in order with you. They are exact copies of the CD-ROM and we include a flyer in the CD acknowledging MICROIMAGES as the developer and owner of the software. The CD-ROMS are checked to see that they install before being sent out."

"However, now that the kits include the ‘Getting Started Booklets’ it would pay us to get a bulk shipment of Lite kits from MicroImages. ‘Unfortunately’ you upgrade your software at a rate faster than we can distribute these kits (As I mentioned before, I prefer not to just handout the disks - TNTlite is still complex software that a person needs some introduction to it. We distribute the disks to all who attend our courses, or to those familiar with GIS/IP). The ‘Getting Started Booklets’ address this problem now, so I’m more prepared to give the software away without training, knowing an inexperienced user has recourse to this helpful literature. So we will be ordering a consignment of TNTlite, largely to kick off our outreach to schools and colleges in the [names] regions to start with."

"[A company] recently purchased TNTmips and I spent 3 days in [a town] showing them the ropes. They are the largest private [engineering consulting firm], with current projects in road design, dams and water supply, mining, road usage surveys and rural development. Previously they used [an Autodesk product] (it seems to be the system of choice in [the nation]), but after seeing TNTmips in action have decided to abandon [the product]. [A name], my contact person there, has a very positive attitude to TNTmips and is the kind of person who can see the potential of the product - he has the ideas and the natural ability to see how TNTmips is able to implement these ideas. Since leaving them with the system he really got cracking on applying for tenders where TNTmips will be put to fundamental use (as he put it ‘TNTmips should give us the edge over competitors - we can now do things they can’t, and do some things a lot faster than they will be able to.’) [We] will be assisting him as consultants on these tenders, till he has the experience to do the job himself, or their personnel have. I will also be training their personnel at other offices in [the nation] - [a name’s] idea is to have at least one TNT system in each of the 3 offices. This client is also valuable in that the work they do gets good exposure in the public eye and their clients’ will become aware of the quality of TNTmips when they see the ‘goods produced’. Already, one of the competing [consulting] firms has been making inquires about [the company’s] new-found image processing capabilities."

"Bureau Services. [We] are receiving more and more requests to provide processed satellite imagery in hardcopy and digital format. We are responding to this by expanding our equipment and staff base. There is obviously a market here, our only competition here in [items skipped]. To date most of the mining houses have been using Australian, Irish or American consultants to do their satellite data processing, but having discovered us, are finding our services to be of good quality, quicker, and, of course, cheaper in that they pay with [our currency]."

"What I am offering our clients besides hardcopy printouts of the processed data, is a digital copy of the processed data and TNTview bundled in with the contract so they can get the maximum benefit from the data - they pay a huge fee for this digital data and it seems to me to be huge waste if they just opt for hardcopy. Our first client [a name], has accepted our quote including TNTview and we will shortly be placing the order. In this way I hope to (a) sell many TNTview systems and (b) when they see what we can produce with TNTmips, hopefully they will upgrade from TNTview to TNTmips at some later date."

Email from a client in Germany on 22 May 1997.

"We have been working with TNTmips for about on year now and are very pleased with it. But now we are facing a problem which we hope you can help us solve. One of our customers, a European wide operating company, is interested in using TNTatlas as an informational system on one of their locations in Germany, meaning our company would process all the information they wish to have access to and prepare TNTatlas ready for them to use as information system. But, and this is the problem, they insist on their logo and company name / wish their logo and company name to be but instead of TNTatlas and MicroImages (its about 8 to 10 licenses of TNTatlas for the first). We know from other software companies that they offer license for their programs completely without the companies logo and name, to an appropriately higher price of course. If you agree could we implement the new titles just by using the TNTsdk? If so we would of course purchase a license of TNTsdk too."

"Please let us know whether anything like this is possible with MicroImages and if, how much such a license would cost. We are sure that, supposed we get the commission and the project succeeds, this would well be a new and fast growing market for TNTatlas in Germany."

Extracted from a letter from a TNTlite user in the Slovak Republic on 22 May 1997.

"At our Experimental Hydrology Base we are engaged in the project ‘Hydroecology of forests in the mountain catchments’. The aim of our project is to solve the problems of hydrology of forests in the mountain parts of catchments that are of the great importance for water resources formation and for compensation of water runoff from catchment. The main tasks are the quantification of disposable water resources in the root soil zone influenced by soil-plant-atmosphere interrelations, water movement in the stony soils on the steep slopes and groundwater increase by percolation. Very interesting is the role of physiological evaporation from trees at the water resources formation and changes of forest cover and evaporation in consequence climatic change influence. But the crucial problem is the spatial distribution of geographical, climate, soil and vegetation parameters and data."

"Thanks to your kind help we have started to learn and use the TNTlite 5.5 at analysis of the geography of catchments and their soils, geology, forests canopy features, etc., and as a tool for analysis of spatial interrelations. We also try to implement some GIS-based modeling techniques for catchment rainfall-runoff processes, for soil moisture content spatial distribution and related problems."

"The TNTlite 5.5 with the mapping and image processing capability is really powerful tool for GIS applications, remote sensing image processing and spatial data analysis. It is essential to learn as much as possible and as fast as possible to know and use this important tool. We have learned the basics from the enclosed on-line documentation but we would need to practice the real situation more and also to study the possibility of automation and programming of our applications."

[continues on concerning acquiring a copy of TNTlite 5.6]

Extracted from email from a client in Australia on 29 May 1997.

"We have been using Mips [TNTmips] for 12 months and love your product. We runArc/Info and Mips side by side and sometimes have problems with both. We have survived all the glitches and enhancement you produce (thank god for the quarterly upgrades)--we wish we got upgrades from ESRI."

"We feel that we know enough about the software to ask some questions"

[Eighteen astute questions, new feature suggestions, and complaints followed, all essentially dealing with vector-based GIS issues. Some of general interest follow:]

"6. Could you produce scale bars with kilometer spelt KILOMETRE for antipeopian endusers?" [Simply type the desired label under the scale bar. Antipeopian as from antipedal, which is defined as located on the opposite foot; antipeopian is not equal to contrarian, even though among American Indians, a contrar is an Indian who did everything backward: rode his horse backward, walked backward, said no for yes, ... sort of like a politician.]

"11. We have used up all the north arrows do you have more coming -- :-)" [South arrows were offered for down under. Actually, we are kind of fresh out of ideas for new north arrows, so send in your hardcopy, sketches, etc. for new north arrows. No hand gestures please.]

"13. The feature mapping facility is brilliant, however we always seem to need to dial our own ranges in rather than arrive at them incrementally. Menu implementation of BOXCAR.SML is eagerly anticipated. Is there any chance of this capability being incorporated into the feature mapping process." [Feature mapping is coming up on the schedule for an overhaul to get a swarm of improved features.]

"15. Why can’t we do theme mapping off non-numeric table attributes similar to arcview or mapinfo - we feel that this is a severe impediment for you to the desktop mapping market." [It can be done now by using computed fields to convert strings.]

"18. If you could definitely improve the vector overlay facilities we probably would buy another license soon. We have told ESRI that they had better watch out for you...." [That’s the general idea, but it’s still a David and Goliath deal.]

"bye for now, love [a name.]" [Love is good.]

Email from a former client in Brazil on 28 May 1997.

[This inquiry comes from a client who has just changed employers and does not currently have a TNTmips.]

"What I would like to know is if there is any rebate if I decide to purchase two licenses of Mips. My company has already purchased PCI, and I have to persuade people to change to Mips. As soon as I have a position on this, I will let you know."

Email from a TNTlite client in Croatia on 17 June 1997.

"Please send me prices for TNT Software, for Pentium (166 Mhz, RAM 32 MB, HD 2 GB, CD 8x, Windows 95). Also please explain me how can I get TNTdemo for 30 days testing." [TNTdemo has not been available for two years and was replaced by TNTlite.]

"Via Internet I copied TNTlite and I am now learning how use it. It seems to me that TNT could be the most favorable aid for the postgraduate study in Remote Sensing, in comparison to Erdas, Erdas Imagine, Ermapper, Ilwis and PCI. The mentioned Software Systems I have used on Sun Sparc and/or on Pentiums in Remote Sensing Laboratory in Zagreb, Croatia (my former job)."

"In autumn 1997 I hold a course named ‘Remote Sensing and Electronic Intelligence from Air and Space’, in postgraduate study in Aeronautics, on the Faculty for Traffic, University of Zagreb. If TNTlite satisfies educational needs I plan to bye professional TNT."