30 December 2003
Testimonials and Other Tidbits (RV6.9)
The following are some of
the complimentary written comments and related interesting items received at
MicroImages since the shipment of RV6.8 exactly as provided except for the
comments and edit alterations [shown in brackets] to keep them anonymous
where necessary. Additional
favorable 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, and so on, and many are written by those
whose first language is not English.
MicroImages clients using TNT professional
products
Extracted from email from the USA
on 12 May 2003
[This client is explaining the use
of the new feature added in RV6.8 that permits virtual fields to combine
together attributes for nodes, points, lines, and polygons—lines and the
bounding polygons in this particular case.]
“Used the new leftpoly
right poly functions for attachment to lines and it works great and saves
me a lot of time. Best
feature of all is once you have a computed all the necessary fields for
the line that you can now write some very complex combinations of
variables to do polygon dissolves.
“Used to make up the database
for left and right poly classes or attributes associated with each line
but had to do it all external to TNTmips.
We have used this created database extensively for the last 5 years
to do a recursive routine to create contiguous area from many adjacent
polygons into a single polygon based on attribute information.
It is extremely useful to create habitat “patches”, then
analyzing points within patches for the nearest boundaries (edge), type of
boundaries (habitats and ecotones) and a host
of other ecological questions. You
can run the TNT fragstats.sml [to
do this] but it does not tell you who is adjacent to whom and where
the “next nearest” patch of the same habitat is or the next nearest
next nearest. We use the poly
attributes attached to lines in a large number of analyses.”
Extracted from email from an
international client on 13 May 2003
“The
[project] is going on and on.
In fact, the project will not end in 2003, but will continue at
least into 2006. Meanwhile,
310 individual projects (school construction or rehabilitation or
replacement) have been completed, 190 are under planning/ construction.”
“The
GIS work in TNTmips is now mainly site selection and project monitoring,
and production of map graphics used for reports.
Our project manager in [a city]
feels that it helps a lot. However,
there is a break in my development activities.
While map data are established and o.k., the attribute data of
school, students and demography database of [an organization] are
unreliable, and all attempts to improve matters failed. Therefore, we are
waiting for positive results of a more centralized database campaign of
the Ministry of Education (big Oracle project, financed by World Bank).
Until then [my organization] is
not inclined to put more money into the GIS.”
Extracted from email from Germany
on 6 June 2003
[from a client who has prepared a
TNTatlas, which was just posted for them to try on MicroImages’
TNTserver site hosted on our old 450 MHz Pentium server farm.
They are using the HTML-based TNTclient
for the access to this atlas and comment:]
“In general I’m surprised by
the speed of the system. A
last question concerns the compression of the jpg-files.
Due to some fine elements in the map the artifacts of the jpg-compression
influence the readability of different maps.
Is it possible to change the value of the compression-factor?”
[MicroImages support responds as
follows with regard to the “speed”:]
“Surprised by the speed.
Is it too slow? try reducing the size of the HTML TNTclient
window. We could use an HTML
page instead of a simple URL to start an atlas, we could then hardcode a
smaller window. Smaller
window means less data to send, mean client looks faster.
The primary bottleneck is normally the bandwidth of the connection.
If there is a specific layer or group of layers you believe are
still too slow, when rendered smaller we could ask the system to cache
them in advance. I do this
for atlases with 100s of layers, reduces initial drawing time for example
from 5 minutes to 10 seconds. Has
less effect the less layers you have.
Unless I missed a particularly complicated layout in your atlas, I
don’t believe pre caching would help much.”
[the client then responds:]
“My comment to the speed of
the system was in a positive way, I was surprised that the quick response
of the system, so perhaps the jpg-files could
be a little larger with a better display result.”
[MicroImages support then responded
that using JP2 images in the atlas would give better control of the map
quality and more compression including the requested control of the
compression ratio and thus more speed as less data needs to be read.]
Extracted from email from Canada
on 25 June 2003
“Hi.
My name is [name].
I am a student of the University of Calgary and presently use the
TNTmips for my research on image classification and change detection.
I am interested in using the TNTserver for my research because
TNTmips proved to be very good and I have a couple of technical questions
regarding the architecture and features of the TNTserver software in terms
of some of the specifications for WebGIS by OpenGIS
consortium.”
Email from Germany on 15 July 2003
“Friends of MI,
“Naturally you only hear from
us when there are problems, bug or there is something to criticize.
So I want to take the opportunity and let you know that we are in
general very satisfied with TNT. After
problems with V6.7 you have made a great leap with V6.8.
“You have improved error
management and support substantially.
It is good to know that you always respect the wishes of your
clients, work together with them and that you improve your software
constantly.
“In times when GIS budgets for
(municipals) administrations are reduced because of financial problems it
is good that we have a GIS that covers the wide range of GIS applications
and that for a fair price. Furthermore
you have an impressive number of interfaces to other GIS-Software data
formats so that we have less problems with data exchange than users of
greater GIS-providers.
“So go on this way
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Email from Australia on 18 July
2003
[from a client who is using a 5
year old TNTmips 6.0 and is in the process of ordering an upgrade to
V6.80]
“Just
a few comments about TNTmips. I
love it (even after some 10 years from the bad old days of DOS version
3.0). [Yes, DOS was bad!]
My
previous employer decided to go for ArcInfo—$AUS
45,000—and they have not managed to win any contracts.
“[We]
have just signed a contract to
study losses of seagrass and beaches around [a
large Australian coastal city].
TNTmips has been a fundamental tool in allowing us to win
this project and I have made sure at conferences and meetings that
the name of your company and its excellent products have been touted.
We are now using your products to process aerial photography,
airborne hyperspectral imagery (HYMAP and CASI), satellite data (Hyperion,
MODIS, and QuickBird II) and combine this with
ground training using GPS, lots of terrestrial and marine diving (yes I do
get wet).
“I have had a few glitches
with TNTmips particularly with vector analyses (Illegal inode
Specified) – but have learnt how to edit the “ini”
file to overcome this problem. I
admit to falling back to Intellicad when I
need to do some CAD work – but the DXF import to TNTmips makes this
fairly seamless.
“Just completed a 21 class
feature map (based upon airphotos and HYMAP
data) covering 10 by 8 km at 1 meter resolution, mapping seagrasses,
sediments feature, mangrove and salt marsh vegetation – classification
process using TNTmips worked beautifully – seriously big file!!!
“Look forward to continuing a
good supplier/customer relationship and when the time comes that I am able
to send you info on my use of your software I will do so (issues of
contracts and intellectual property at the moment).”
Email from USA on 28 July 2003
[from a former client in South
Africa who is now a graduate student in the USA]
“I see that you have the
University of California listed as a user.
Could you tell me who they are?
I would like to link up with them.
“I previously used TNTmips in
South Africa with [a name].
Unfortunately ESRI is the flavor of the month around here, but does
not quite taste that great in my mouth!!!!”
Email to Germany on 24 July 2003
[Large complex SML scripts are
possible. This is from
MicroImages’ software support to a student at a German University who
has written a large SML script as his Masters thesis project.
This script called LandsatCalibrationPilot.sml
calibrates Landsat images to reflectance and
is available from the microimages.com script exchange.]
“Though I haven’t been able
to look extensively at your script (it is a bit overwhelming at ~90,000
lines and 4MB), I thought I might offer a suggestion.
I imagine that debugging your script, in general, is a difficult
task just given the size of the file.”
[continues on with some
suggestions from MicroImages support with regard to script structure]
From a FAX from Europe on 22
September 2003
[from a national agricultural
organization that is familiar with TNTmips and has just recently ordered
several units]
“ESRI.
Looks like we are giving up totally on ArcInfo
in [named organization].
At least we are at the moment radically minimizing the amount of
A/I licenses.”
From MicroImages Resellers
Extracted from an international
email on 16 May 2003
“Today I presented the atlas
that is related to the [a name]
Landslide project. [A
name] personnel got quite enthusiastic about it.
I do not know the practical meaning of that could be at least they
installed both TNTmips and TNTatlas and have started playing with it!
I also think that the ArcInfo local
representative liked the way it is running…”
Extracted from an international
email on 6 June 2003
“… where I plan to contact
in an “intelligent” manner all the municipal planning offices here
around [here] (about 150 municipal
administrations), because I see with much less features and competences…
Just to have an imagine about the technical level: there is a “GIS”
software producer [a company name]
that proudly announces that with its last release (9.0) it’s now
possible “to convert maps from one coordinate system to another”!!!
It’s incredible! Chapeau!
Once, I lost a call for tenders against them, and I didn’t digest
the matter…”
Extracted from an international
email on 13 June 2003
“For your further information,
the SML I am designing is for [a company name] aerial survey company who
take about 30,000 images on a good day, and want an end-to-end system that
streams these images through colour-balancing,
edge-enhancement, trend-removal and cloud shadow removal.
The interface I am designing allows them to set up and test
settings for these processes on a test image/s from the batch, write a
batch file containing the desired settings, and batch processes the job
with these settings. Obviously I would like the image loading and viewing
in the application to be as slick as possible.
Each of the input images is already a composite colour
image, but to process them they must be broken down into RGB components,
but still displayed to the operator as a composite through the processing.
On the back of the SML I will be selling them several TNTviews
to them to run the application.”
Extracted from an international
email on 8 July 2003
“Beside that we have noticed
that sdedit [Spatial
Data Editor] now works much more reliably than ever before and if
it crashes nearly no data is lost. We
have been able to work with the backup objects after a crash.
This helps us to have our work done much more efficiently than
before.
“Thank
you and the software engineers for their assistance, it is greatly
appreciated.”
An international email of 5 August
2003
“I have attached a screenshot
of a completed import job [from MapInfo]
that took a little while [alas, 45 hours]—I
thought you might be interested. It
is a layer of land parcels containing about 10 million objects [assumed
to mean elements] and many millions of database records beneath.
I am tremendously impressed at how stable and reliable the software
was through the import process. I
think it would have broken many others.”
Extracted from an international
email on 6 October 2003
“I can safely say as far as
GIS and RS in [our nation] is
concerned. TNTmips is the
package of choice. We
continue to support the users here, and they are the ones really
undertaking meaningful GIS/RS projects.”
Extracted from an international
email on 6 October 2003
[from a dealer with 3 software
engineers developing an application with TNTsdk,
the project was initiated by sending the lead software engineer to
work/consult at MicroImages office for 2 weeks.]
“Hi, our project is a good
way.”
“We have done a big exhibition
2 weeks ago: [exhibition] annual
meeting in Barcelona to present [our
company], TNTmips, and [our
development]. I think
we’ve done the good choice using MicroImages SDK to develop our
tools.”
Extracted from an international
email on22 October 2003
[with reference to a prominent
university currently using MicroImages Special Academic License with 5
seats and planning now to expand it to 8]
“Regarding the University of [a
name]: I have to talk to them about the license configuration
tomorrow. As the staff member
told me their institute is asking for funding of [a
project] and is not sure they will get the funding.
The good news from their institution was that he told me that Arcview
does not play any role any longer at their institute.
Both research and education are based on TNTmips/TNTlite.
We are going to send them a package of 20 TNTlite
CDs next week.”
Extracted from an international
email on 22 October 2003
“And it seems to be the moment
to say thank you to all of you at MicroImages, especially you and Ron, who
made the [a name] sale possible.
[The client] is a very
challenging client, but our joint effort showed him that we could handle
those sales. Thank you very
much!”
Extracted from an international
email on 22 November 2003
“The new features in 6.9 look
great too. I think that
improvement of having a hand cursor appear over hyperindex
areas is a superb feature—it is something we have been asked about too.
My key developer is really keen on the ActiveX call backs in SML
too because it will really help the merging between the GIS/Image
Processing expertise and IT/components for the larger system jobs.”
Extracted
from an international email on 23 December 2003
“I will like to take this
opportunity to thank you all for the support and help provided along last
year. It has been a great
experience to work with the MI team, and have a good software product, but
specially have the confidence of having a group of people behind it, that
develop and supports the product. This
makes to the ones at the other end, to feel confident to promote and sale
the TNT products.”
From TNTlite users
Extracted from email from the USA
13 May 2003
[from a beginning user]
“I guess it would be very nice
to have the professional TNT in the near future.
Since I’m just starting to familiarize with the software, though,
I’ll spend a few days with the Lite version,
making sure that I have the basic knowledge of the software.
I was trained in ArcView 3.2….
TNT does not seem to be so different, right?”
Comment from a registration from
Greece on 13 May 2003
“I am postgraduate student at
the university mentioned above and I am interested in learning how to use
GIS programs, especially yours. It
will help me complete my master and later my PhD thesis.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you in advance.”
Extracted from email from the USA
on 17 June 2003
“First of all, I would like to
tell you how impressed I am with this new version of TNTmips.
It feels much smoother, and looks great.”
Extracted from email from
Australia on 5 July 2003
“I’ve used [TNTlite]
briefly through my education period.
It was handed to us as a promotional piece of software, to take
home and test for our own personal use, in college our predominantly used
package was ARC-INFO to which I find similar with TNTmips.
“My employment is currently
with [a local government].
Our unit’s main focus is geared towards managing Councils
infrastructure assets in its entirety, such as Bridges, parks, Stormwater,
Roads, etc. What we are
hoping would come out of our latest R & D attempts is to obtain a
package that will reasonably attempt to Value and Spatially maintain these
assets in a way suitable to our needs.
The valuation and spatial components does not have to flow through
the same application, it is however our preference to do so.
“The usability of TNTmips lite
was pretty impressive and I remembered it recently with the up-come of
this R & D exercise. I
told the powers that be about this software and they were very inquisitive
about this application.”
Comment from a registration from a
Museum in Denmark on 12 July 2003
“I have used the TNTlite
for years in my work as an astronomical and archaeological consultant.
We do not operate with huge numbers of data, so the program is very
well tailored for us.”
From a Massachusetts student’s weblog
(and a Mac user) on 4 August 2003
“The second, ESRI’s
Geography Network allows for the exploration of additional mapping and GIS
concepts via the online ArcExplorer
application, coupled to a broad range of free data [but
not on his Mac!]. More
adventurous readers may want to try their hand at using a full-blown GIS
application, the free cross-platform TNTlite.
TNTlite is a very powerful, but quite
complex, piece of software; fortunately, the program is accompanied by a
generous complement of tutorials that constitute one of the best
introductions to GIS I have ever encountered.
These tutorials can be digested in small bites, with good rewards
at each stage—I would strongly recommend starting at the first one, and
progressing through the set.”
Comment from a registration from
Nevada on 18 August 2003
“I am a middle school teacher
and I wish to use this excellent software with my students.
I used to use TNTmips as an exploration geologist finding tons and
tons of gold and loved it!”
From Other Parties
Extracted from an international
email on 29 August 2003
[The party sending this email to a
reseller represents an organization similar to a county government in the
United States.]
“Just a quick follow up on our
evaluation of the TNTmips Professional package which you kindly arranged
for us. While we were unable,
due to time constraints at our end, to have the package set up on a server
with multiple users we did have sufficient time to assess the product on a
stand-alone machine. In
summation, we found it to have a high level of functionality, particularly
in the areas of file conversion, data analysis and the presentation of
raster-based models.
“The situation here is that
our organization already has the ESRI suite of products used by our GIS
Mapping Unit, however there is currently no spare capacity to use for our
own purposes, without further significant expenditure on additional
licensing to increase concurrent users.
We do already use MapInfo [in our
group] for a couple of task-specific activities here in our section
but don’t believe it has the capability to support our business needs
into the future and therefore have not considered this point.
“We are now arranging
opportunities in-house to assess the ESRI product’s application to our
own business needs in terms of functionality vs. ongoing licensing costs
etc. In short, we did not
want to blindly signup to increasing our licensing of this product without
fairly comparing it with your own. I
will let you know of our decision based on our testing in the coming
weeks.”
Network Chatter
question posted on the ERDAS
discussion list on 9 May 2003. by
Paul Beaty paul@arch.gatech.edu
“Requesting knowledge and
opinions.
“Although we currently use
MrSID Generation 2 extensively, we’re preparing to switch to a JPEG2000
product supporting geographic tags. We
are planning to use GeoJP2 from Mapping Science http://www.mappingscience
tags. We have leaned away
from MrSID Generation 3 because of the LizardTech’s
new pricing policy, and away from ER Mapper’s
ECW because we need a product supported by the original software vendor,
not a 3rd party tool. Since
we are primarily an ERDAS and ESRI shop, these are our primary concern.
Nethertheless, we use other products
and support groups with other products, and are concerned about the move
in the GIS industry as a whole.
“Here is what we currently
know about GeoJP2:
“Products that support
JPEG2000 products, but not JP2 yet, include MapInfo, Z/I products, TNT (MicroImages).
“Here are 3 questions I’d
like feedback on:
“1) Have any of you ERDAS-1
users started investigating GeoJP2?
“2) Does anyone know of ENVI, Smallworld,
and/or Bentley’s plans?
“3) Does anyone know if data
vendors are planning to use any 2:1 lossless
compression like “JPEG2000?
“Finally, your thoughts if you
have a moment.
“Thank you in advance.”
Paul
W. Beaty, Jr.
Center
for Geographic Information Systems
Georgia
Institute of Technology
276
Fifth Street, 2nd Floor
Atlanta,
Georgia, 30332-0695
(404)385-0909
FAX
(404)385-0450
Response posted on the ERDAS
discussion list on 29 May 2003. by
Paul Beaty paul@arch.gatech.edu
“Thank you to Evan, Jay, and
others for their thoughts concerning JPEG2000.
“It seems people are in the
same boat as I, studying the prospect of moving into the JPEG2000 (my
slang – JP2K) and possibly GeoJP2 direction.
My research has not uncovered a “free” tool for the MS Office
products that supports JP2K. Moreover,
Microsoft will follow their old path of allowing some one else to blaze
the trail. Adobe Photoshop
already supports JP2000. I
hope someone works with Photoshop so they will not kill the GeoJP2 map
tags like they kill the GeoTIFF tags.
“Except for ENVI looking at
GeoJP2, and Space Imagining listed as a user on the MappingSciences.com
web site, I have not been able to determine 1, 2, and 3 in the original
thread [above].
“Overall, I am seeing a user
community showing more interest in JPEG2000 than the developer community.
This may be because JP2K libraries are not free, as are the JPEG
libraries of old. Until JP2K
hits a certain money threshold, some developers will sit and wait.
Fortunately for the GIS community … ERDAS, ESRI, and other GIS
application developers are more forward thinking that non-GIS developers,
like Microsoft.”
Statement posted on macrumors.com,
sometime in June 2003
[http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/22389-1.html]
“Originally posted by altair
Wow, what GIS apps are you running on a Mac? I am just so used to running ArcView
8 on a pc that I didn't think I had an option. You using GRASS? I am also
a student, minoring in GIS, and would love a
way to use it on a Mac, please explain. Thanks ~altair”
Response posted on macrumors.com,
sometime in June 2003
[http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/22389-1.html]
“I would heavily suggest
looking into TNTmips by MicroImages. They make a FREE version of TNTmips
for students like myself that has all the functionality of a full blown
vector/raster GIS called TNTlite (it has a few
size restrictions however). It's free, easy to use, has a plethora of
tutorials to help you, and I like it much better than the Arc products and
even GRASS. In fact, I'm using it for my Master's thesis right now. I
would definitely give it a try. It runs in the new X11 program that Apple
came out for UNIX programs, since it is natively a UNIX based GIS like
GRASS.”
Email on 31 July 2003
[From a former Ph.D. staff member
who departed 6 years previous and is now in a Department of Neurology in
Texas.]
“Being a former employee of
yours, I have followed the development of TNTmips on the Macintosh
platform and am glad to see that it continues to enjoy great support from
you. I wanted to let you know
that I just read an article about the TNT products supporting the 64-bit
Panther OS on the MacCentral website.
Hopefully, this will generate additional interest in your product
and your company can continue to grow.
Good luck in the future.”
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