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10 December 2004

Testimonials and Other Tidbits (RV7.0)

This document in PDF ...

The following are some of the complimentary written comments and related interesting items received at MicroImages since the shipment of RV6.9 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 Africa on 8 January 2004

“I have now secured two interested organizations who are interested in purchasing TNTmips: one is a [name] University Department and a second is a government of [a national] Department in charge of population and statistical censuses. This has happened because I gave a demonstration to both organizations titled “The Strengths of TNTmips in Data Capture, Manipulation and Analysis.” Both organizations have been using ArcView GIS and other image processing systems but have got into trouble to georeference scanned maps, editing and creating GIS databases.”

Extracted from email from the United States on 6 January 2004

“The key to streamlining this process is the wireless network between each location. It handles our voice over IP traffic as well as these [a name] maps quite easily. It makes it simple to move data back and forth between my office and any other office. To further leverage this network, I’ve added a SnapServer drive that I have built for a company wide atlas (covering 20 counties of the 99 in [a state]) using TNTatlas. Any location can drill down into any county in our trade area and measure fields or look up grid sample fertility information that was collected over the past several years.”

Extracted from email from New Zealand on 28 January 2004

[This client is using TNTview on a Macintosh.]

“You ask how we are using TNTmips. Its main role is to assist with farm plan development. We obtain orthophotography from an aerial photography company, which we print out at A0 size and ask farmer to draw his paddock line onto. We then capture that linework using a combination of heads-up digitizing [with TNTedit] or image processing (after rescanning), to create digital paddocks. The combination of features provided by TNTmips works well for this work.

“I would love to try out some Quickbird or Ikonos imagery as an alternative to aerial photography. The new ortho capabilities of V6.9 will make this possible.

“In addition, we use TNTmips in a variety of other GIS or image analysis tasks in association with a mix of other tools that we have. TNTmips complement these other tools and add capability lacking in them (ESRI / MapInfo etc.).”

Extracted from email from the United States on 3 March 2004

[This client is using TNTview on a Macintosh.]

“The program is working well, and I am becoming more conversant with it. It currently fulfills my needs, but I can see the potential that lies in the fuller versions. Just for your information, my project involves calculating the cultivated acres of strawberries in California. I take aerial photos of the current plantations, from which I identify fields that are planted to strawberries. Since it turns out that the field sizes and shapes do not change much from year to year (ownership and geography do not change often), I can then use this information to locate the fields on USGS terraserver maps. Working from 2 meter resolution images that I have downloaded, converted to jpg2 and imported into TNTview, I have so far measured some 8000 plus acres in fields ranging from fractionally more than one acre to more than 150 acres. The average plantation size is less than 40 acres, postage stamp by Midwestern standards. But keep in mind that strawberry growers must invest in excess of $12,000 per acre each year prior to first harvest and will wait another 3 to 7 weeks for returns. Meanwhile, harvest costs, etc. continue. It is a very capital intensive crop. None-the-less, after a record harvest last year, the plantation acreage is up 12% this year. Go figure.”

Extracted from email from the United States on 19 March 2004

[This client is using TNTmips on a Macintosh.]

“Thank you for your personal introduction and for the prompt repair of the product error I reported. I downloaded the TNTmips v.6.9 patch and it works correctly with my files. MicroImages provides the most responsive and professional technical support I have experienced in many years of computer use; you should receive some award for technical excellence. I am particularly gratified that you provide such fine support for Macintosh computer users.

“I am a geologist with the USGS and I am using TNTmips to create maps of surficial geology in [names of states]. Eventually I plan to assemble and distribute my work in one or more TNTatlases. I have a long way to go on this task, but MicroImages support staff has made my path a very interesting and productive learning experience.”

Extracted from email from Ecuador on 19 March 2004

“Hope this finds you well. We are now running 6.9 and are very impressed with the results of our first mosaic. We have only an A4 colour scanner and often scan geological maps in pieces, then mosaic them together. In previous version we could always see the joins in the resultant mosaic – but the first mosaic [a name] has produced in 6.9 is flawless!”

Extracted from email from the United States on 19 March 2004

“I just wanted to drop a note to say thank you to your support team. I was having problems with mosaicking and [the boss] and I called you all and you had a patch up the next day. This would never happen with other software companies and I will continue to spread the word about your software as well as your employees!”

Extracted from email from Australia on 3 May 2004

“Thank you for your fast reply. My prior experience of TNTmips is through [a company] where I was an employee for 2 years. [A name] trained me in a great deal (but certainly not all) of the functions of the software, and I have put them to good use. I now contract myself to government and private industry, mainly performing modeling and spatial analysis with delivery into ESRI formats. TNTmips is the backbone of my business and so far I have been fairly successful working on a [state name] salinity mapping project.”

Extracted from email from the United States on 4 May 2004

“I have just purchased an ENVI license at work. I will be testing the advantage of their FLAASH atmospheric correction, a new BandMax routine (due our in version 4.1) for identifying the presence of a particular spectral target in a pixel, and the AsterDTM routine for converting ASTER L1a to L1b calibrations and generating a DEM from the stereo imagery.

“We had problems installing the software because of a flaw in the Microsoft copy/paste tools that changed minus signs into spaces. That let us experience ENVI’s technical support. It was spread over several hours and a few phone calls and e-mail transfers.

“They just sent me a technical support survey, rating their support from 1 to 10 (poor to excellent). In the comments section I wrote the following:

“‘I have been spoiled by the excellent technical support provided by MicroImages, Inc., Lincoln, Nebr., for the past fifteen years. I get live people before the 8th ring of the phone. I do not have to wait for an expert to call me back to address the problem; it is dealt with immediately. For my ENVI installation, I had to have an “administrator” do the work. He left for other jobs when your support could not help us at the time we called. It was a long time before he could come back to my problem. Your Support Engineer was able to identify that the license problem was at our end. The software that we used to copy and paste the license into the window changed the minus signs to spaces, which we did not expect to happen. It was an easy fix once we understood what happened.

“‘MicroImages, Inc., posts bug fixes on their web site every Wednesday for everyone to access. (It used to be Tuesdays and Thursdays.) We do not have to wait for the next version of the software to be released. Some bugs take longer to fix than others, but response is very attractive. I would give MicroImages all 10’s on such a survey as this.’

“I did not retain a copy of my evaluation. I think I gave rated them a 3 on response because of the excessive time it took to deal with the problem, an 8 on courtesy and technical knowledge, and an overall 6.”

“Many thanks for doing this. I curse when things don’t work, but the TNTmips support is second to none! I also appreciate that TNTmips software is running on a large number of platforms and imports / exports to a huge number of geospatial software programs (multiple versions as well) and hence it is inevitable that there will be some formats that are new to you and hence not going to work straight away.”

“Also, following is a very interesting set of emails I thought you might like to see – you’ll note the Australian group [a geo-service company] is ready to present us with about a US$5000+ project just to get freely available data assembled and re-projected and perhaps converted to ASCII text file for eventual use in AutoCAD. I can’t wait to get TNTmips updated and in action! As you can see, our local ‘GIS dealer’ doesn’t even know about MicroImages and all he’s doing is passing some rather expensive machine time on to his clients!

“I just imported two SRTM tiles he sold us as part of another project not long ago with version 5.9 (my current copy) running on my old Toshiba 330 CDT laptop (96 megs of screaming RAM!!!! + 4 gig hard-drive). It only took about 4 minutes to import each file and even though the RVC is about 165 megs I was showing off in no time flat. I can’t believe in the quote below that they are going to ‘re-sell’ these two tiles to us (although they will be a minor part of the 74 tiles to cover South America). They are stuck in a world of being unable to efficiently deal with massive data sets (note concern of how many CD’s at $25 per pop that might take…) and are not really looking after their clients.”

[Since TNTmips has the answers, in response to this email this client was referred to the new V7.0 tutorial booklet on Working with Massive Geodata Objects, the color plate entitled Automatic Batch Imports using SML which uses SRTM as an example, and recommended to apply JPEG2000 compression to reduce data excess size.]

“Your latest version of the Utest [an SML ToolScript] is excellent. It far exceeds my expectations and the cartoscript features you have added are superior to those in the original ArcView [Avenue] script.”

“Here is some information about the use of the new orthorectification procedure in TNTmips 6.9 with QuickBird Standard Ortho Ready images:

“Meanwhile, we produced precise Quickbird image basemaps for four large cities in Yemen, and more work ahead (Sudan, Palestine, …). This procedure works fine. With the help of very precise DEMs (based on 1-2 meter elevation contours and spot heights digitized from old topographic maps), we achieved RMS errors of 1-2 m only, in mountain areas like Taizz, Yemen!

“The only flaw we observed is that the local geoid height input is not evaluated automatically for the Z values of ground points. The ‘Set X from the surface icon button’ is never active.” [Editor’s note: it will not be active and evaluated unless northing and easting are entered. A warning to this effect has now been added in message window.]

“The orthorectification tool is a very useful tool, now that the highest resolution satellite images (especially Quickbird) are available for many places around the globe. It helps us save budget in our projects (by avoiding the very expensive services of image producers and resellers).

“A good DEM is essential for the result of orthorectification, the orthorectification tool would be incomplete without sophisticated tools for DEM creation which are fortunately available in TNTmips, too. It is remarkable that TNTmips supports really all GIS tools you need for GIS basemap preparation from satellite imagery, in professional quality and in one single package (image processing and enhancement, digitizing, vector warping, exporting to required formats, GIS layouts …). Image producers like DigitalGlobe or SpaceImaging should be aware of this. They should recommend TNTmips to their clients.”

“It is good to hear from you again. We have been quietly working away and have not worried about updates for some time. I am beginning to wind down the research program because I plan to retire from the University next year and I don’t think the [geology] department will commit to further support for our lab until they know if we will have anyone to step into the gap. It looks as if we will have to let our subscription lapse for now. Too bad – we have been using MIPS since the time it was a little program called OWL. We still find it the most functional software for many applications.”

[OWL proceeded the name MIPS (started at V0.9) that was eventually changed to TNTmips 4.0 when Windows 2.0 version arrived. Thus this client has used our product continuously for over 20 years!]

“PS: [a name’s] comment re ‘Good Modern Information Management Practices’ is spot-on. I honestly don’t think we could have accommodated the growth as easily as we have without a scaleable information management system such as TNTmips. New datasets and data pricing initiatives of the State and Federal Governments have also played a part in making the necessary information accessible at a reasonable cost. However all the data doesn’t help if you don’t have a system that integrates it easily and intuitively like TNTmips. What a great product!”

Extracted from email from Australia on 8 September 2004

[This is from an experienced user of TNTmips who had been practicing as a consultant and has now been hired by a major mining company who is now purchasing a TNTmips for his professional use.]

“There has been resistance within the company for me to use anything other than their standard systems, however as I reminded them they are not employing me because I do standard work, and I am able to do unconventional things because of some unique tools within TNTmips. I also gave them a list of software they would need to purchase instead of TNTmips (total cost more than TNTmips license) if they did not want to go down the proposed route!”

[This is not the same MicroImages client as noted above. This is from another long term owner of a consulting firm who is very experienced in the use of TNTmips. These comments are in reply to a new MicroImages support staff member who is introducing themselves to this client.]

“I look forward to collaborating with you on the TNTmips software.

“From experience I know that TNTmips will be a long and steep learning curve for you, due to its complexity. I also worked with ESRI software before adopting TNTmips as my company’s primary geospatial package ten years ago. It was the best business decision I ever made; its versatility and efficiency of use enables my company to perform any type of mapping or spatial project competitively. Having to deal with the software errors is a small price to pay for the rapid development schedule which keeps us at the leading edge of geospatial technology. (BTW, my wife is a geologist and co-director of the company, while I am an environmental scientist – we use the same GIS and Images Processing technologies in our respective fields.)”

“Looking around at our ‘competition’ in SA, it is great to note that TNTatlas is streets ahead of other products in its class. However, here are a few ideas which would really put the TNTatlas ahead of all the other competition.”

“I just returned from Ethiopia and more ‘advanced’ GIS training with the [local personnel of a relief organization] using TNTmips. They are making good progress and apply TNTmips on a variety of GIS and RS tasks. They would, however, like to upgrade their current licenses (they have v.6.7) and …”

[from an experienced user moving to a new job]

“Now that I have seen people struggle to get certain tasks done in MapInfo + Discover I am glad that I still have access to MIPS! I am sure some of them will see that they do not need to suffer the limitations of their current geospatial software and a few extra sales may result for MicroImages.”

[in response to the standard notification that a reported problem was fixed in the next weekly patch]

“I’m impressed that you have a system that tracks previous issues. Keep up the good work!”

[This client is using TNTmips 6.4.]

“I thought you might be interested to learn that I have to teach some courses on hydrogeological applications of ASTER at an institution that uses PCI and ArcView products only. So I am busy trying to learn the basics of those systems from their demo packages. TNTmips 6.4 far exceeds either in ease of use and comprehensiveness, as I anticipated. Having tried in vain to persuade the institution to opt for TNTmips, partly because of the courses, I am annoyed to find that it is impossible to view ASTER stereo anaglyphs in either – ie you cannot do a simple rotation of a georeferenced scene so that the eye base, flight path is horizontal on the screen. That is probably the single most useful way of basic image interpretation and vector mapping for geology. So, I am tempted to say ‘I told you so’ …”

From MicroImages Resellers

“The [acronym] means ‘Sistema de Informacion Geografico del Gobierno de la Provincia de [a name]’ (GIS of [a name] Government), which is a GIS system totally built using [1] TNTmips. Actually it has around 10 GB of data, including vector, raster data (DTM, imagery L7 ETM+, and related database tables). It has been prepared some atlases using the available data. At the moment the GGP is evaluating the potential of publishing the data on Internet, so there is a good potential for a TNTserver sale.”

“My project with TNT was interrupted by other task. Recently, I came into some project monies and upgraded TNTmips V6.90 (Mac version). This is great. It is fast and stable, all the windows are resizable, and it correctly addresses the help files, obviating all my previous complaints.”

“Right now [names of dealer staff] (new GI officers) had finished on site (long time) training at [the client’s] GIS center of [the government agency] and they are now in the real TNTmips operation regarding overlaying many geo-layers using MCDA concept for tiled 830 sheets scaled 1:50,000 covering whole country for the purpose of analyzing the suitable area for all major crops. The result will be used for further economic analysis (cost & distance) to define individual crop zoning and this will be reported to the agricultural ministry and then to the cabinet to keep tracking the landuse plantation area & output yield of each major crops for making decision about the (national) annually agricultural policy of [the nation].

“[A name] said long time ago that [his agricultural agency] had to do this overlay analysis for many geolayers using Intergraph system for 25 times using the geodata scaled 1:250,000 (having 54 map sheets covering [our nation] because [it] has separated 25 watershed basin and after that [his organization] will separate the suitability results into 75 projects which stands for the 75 provinces and produce the provincial suitability map for each major crop. The many steps take a lot of time in processing with Intergraph.

“Right now [the agricultural agency] in using TNTmips (new era), [the agency] will do the same overlay analysis using much more detailed geolayers for the whole tiled 830 sheets (in one RVC file) in one time processing after specifying weight & score……and then [the agency] will separate the suitability map for each major crop. Right, each geo-provincial result will be kept in promotional TNTatlas CD-ROM having nice VB [Visual Basic] user interface form for displaying the plantation area calculation $ yield plus geo-querying function and CRYSTAL report program to produce beautiful crop report. [The agency] (on behalf of Agricultural ministry) will distribute these TNTatlas CD-ROM to high level officers and to all ministries later on. Of course, [a name] intends to write the official report for the new concept of [the agricultural agency’s] major crop analysis using TNTmips in [our langauge] (and in English) after this operational project is completed….and published in many well known magazine & government reports…..and [we] expects this could be the really good benchmark for technical comparison with other GI products in [our nation’s] market! Note: Our VB programmers [names] are now at [government agency’s] GIS center to help [a name’s] staff to design the VB form about provincial agricultural database for using with TNTatlas version 6.9. If there is any further problem in developing SML & VB interfacing, they will report to MicroImages by themselves.”

“In reference to your short note, let me tell you that [a province] Planning Department – personnel that are using TNT products, as well as directors are very please with the software and the progress obtained so far, being probably the only State Government in [the nation] that has been accomplished in the GIS matter what has been done. In fact as result of this they have decided to buy the extra licenses, in thinking to initiate and perform during this year the Province Land Management Plan.”

“Please be advised that we have another client interested into TNT products. We recently installed a complete training room with RemoteView Desktop software [from PCI Geomatics], and the customer needs affordable product to register imagery and in particular radar image. So we proposed TNTmips instead of RemoteView Professional, much more expansive.” [Assumed meaning here is that RemoteView Professional is much more expensive, not expansive – or that TNTmips is more expansive.]

“Thanks for the news. Good to hear, that MI appreciate the requests. I have seen the graphical datatip color plate! A beautiful improvement!”

“Concerning the Property Atlas [DVD TNTatlas] everything went fine. I did not have any of the problems announced at that time [for the beta version]. I also talked with [another reseller] about this initiative, and we found that it is very interesting, since in this way users and potential users have the concrete possibility to experience what it means to work with the TNT Products, and above all how the software product behave with data beyond the TNTlite limitations.

“Personally, my plans are still to individuate some (at least one) small local administration with which to carry out a series of sample data. These data could be produced in part against a very low fee – or completely free – if they would agree with publication of the info products. I’m especially thinking about ‘intelligent street maps’ or things like that which could be more easily marketed.

“Concerning the other ‘added value’ product – the Global Reference DVD – I also was very interested in it and I find its use value is very high.”

[comments in incoming email on 27 August 2004]

“In any case, even if we don’t win that bid, I – either alone or together with [a firm] – will develop some of these packages [TNTsdk and SML based extensions to TNTmips] in order to enter the [a nation’s] ‘application market’. As said above, it seems that municipal GIS technicians are not satisfied enough if a GIS software producer doesn’t provide for specific applications (‘extensions’, ‘additional modules’, etc.). With [another reseller], we often try to explain that the TNT products do not necessarily need additional applications since the base software already provides for a high level of specialized tools. But I think this approach doesn’t work here: I’ll see if setting up these relatively simple additional packages there will be more interest…

“For example, a short (and simplified) conversation in a recent fair in [a city], after I explained shortly the features of the TNT products:

“-- The visitor: ‘Do the TNT products have some specific tourism-oriented applications?’

“-- I: ‘There is no need for such specific applications, since it is quite easy to set up a tourism information system with the built-in features of the TNT products.’

“--The visitor: ‘I see… the TNT products have no tourism-oriented applications…’

“-- I: ‘If you want we can take a look at the data of some of our past projects in order to explain what I mean.’

“-- The visitor: ‘Yes, but other GIS software produces provide for specific tourism-oriented applications…’

“As you can imagine, the dialogue terminated here. Maybe a more ‘commercial’ representative would have had a bit more success than me, but it’s a quite usual kind of conversation.”

[response from software support on 31 August 2004]

“The ‘conversation’ example you gave [above] explains your point very well. It is just too overwhelming for some clients to consider using a complex software package that isn’t written specifically for their industry. Part of this has to do with the specific language of their industry/specialty. But also, in my opinion, a non-specific software requires them to do more up front work or have a better understanding of exactly what they want to perform. So for them, it’s not only a question of how to do something (in TNTmips); instead they want to know what kind of tasks can be done (specific toward their industry) and then straight forward guidance on how they can be performed. This is a big training factor for them as well. In tech support we occasionally see users who ‘don’t have time’ to learn what this product can do for them (i.e. going through the tutorials), which results in a lot of wasted time going around in circles. Fortunately, I’ve found most TNT users don’t fall into that category, however, they are still interested in learning how others in their field make use of TNTmips.”

“The ability to set up advanced kriging parameters directly on the raw point data is greatly aiding the streaming on of these new technologies. It is remarkable how significantly more advanced the gridding abilities in TNTmips are over competing products too. We recently demonstrated the creation of set scale, high resolution EMI grid data in TNTmips against MapInfo and ArcGIS. ArcGIS crashed with both spatial analyst and 3D analyst in play, and MapInfo produced a lot of spurious information, and allowed no parameter manipulation of the search radius or cell size. ArcGIS with geostatistical analyst and ArcScene both produced results best described as ‘spurious’. Using MapInfo’s Discover extensions, a similar picture was produced but a linear color ramp was automatically applied meaning the scale was totally meaningless and it was impossible to interpret. The speed and efficiency of TNTmips was also notable, producing clear and consistent results in ~30 seconds on average where it was taking upwards of 15 minutes with MapInfo and extensions.”

[Extensions, extensions, and then even more extensions required for each geospatial task!]

“I had a very nice email from a [name] user who has recently moved out to [our nation]. She is working with ArcGIS in her new job here, but is keen to promote TNTmips to her company. She has been using TNTmips since version 1.x [i.e., 15 to 20 years] so is clearly a long standing user.

“Version 7 is looking really good thus so far. The new abilities around manifolds are fantastic and we have been demonstrating this to some mineral explorers of late. The capability with 3D views, particularly in being able to create cross sections and fence diagrams give more power for geological mapping than does specific software such as MineMap etc.”

“At the moment we are preparing a raster mosaic of 1369 24-bit color orthoimages, each of them 2500 by 2500 pixels in size. The process of mosaicking them together in one will take around 41 hours on a simple 2.4 MHz AMD Athlon machine. Today they [our client] will receive all images imported from TIFF into six project files. With the geodata installed locally on the PC it takes 23 seconds for the display process to display an overview. Zooming in, zooming to the active layer, panning by space bar and so on is much faster, usually between 1 and 3 seconds. It is not hard to guess that they will be amazed how fast display of huge raster data sets can be. By now [i.e., at this time] they are working with Vector Works on Mac OS X. Again a good chance for us.”

[The resulting mosaic here is about 25 gigabytes in size. Mosaicking has been made more efficient in RV7.0 and this same mosaicking task might take 10 hours on this same computer depending on the type of overlap reconciliation and compression applied to the output object.]

“Have a fantastic meeting with one of our overseas clients yesterday and they are most impressed with how we use TNTmips. Their boss is coming out to meet us again and see ‘his project’ on screen, so hopefully he will be happy as well.”

From TNTlite users

“I am a new archaeology student (though I have a Master's in Comp Sci) and am looking at familiarizing myself with the various GIS packages available. Yours came up when googled (‘GIS archaeology software’) and you work with Mac OSX and Linux which makes me very, very happy. Thank you for providing this for archaeology students to download, evaluate and use.”

“I am working with GIS at the Municipality of [a town] Department of Surveying and Mapping, in the southwest of Sweden. I have been using TNTlite for some years now, and I think it is a very nice package. However, its limitations are becoming a bit frustrating, as I need to process very large data sets nowadays.

“I am therefore interested in a license for TNTmips.” [continues on to request information]

[An order was placed several days later for a TNTmips professional unit.]

“Until a lightning stroke my computer three weeks ago, I have used TNTlite for around three years in my job as an archaeological researcher for our museum. I use it for mapping and registration work of ancient monuments in our upland woods, and I am very satisfied with your wonderful software. Thank you.”

“Its capabilities to make real world map is quite amazing. Also the image analysis part also good.”

“I am a Geoscience student at Middle Tennessee State University. I am interested in becoming familiar with your products, as I believe they will be useful for field studies. I stumbled upon your company while looking for a reliable X window server for windows. I have just run the course of a trial version and will be activating a license code today as well. I am also a Computer Science student at the same university and have found MI/X very reliable and useful.”

“I am the computer coordinator of the [a name] High School in NSW (just south of [a name]). I am reviewing GIS software to be used by our Geography Department as part of both senior and junior programs. I have downloaded the TNTlite program and it seems to work very nicely on our Mac systems. I am interested to know what the academic cost of the full program is so that we can use it for demo purposes on larger data sets which exceed the limitations of the TNTlite program.”

From Other Parties

[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

“This is a great product… lots of features… great price… this is great GIS software…”

“TNT & TNTlite – MicroImages – version compléte payante, version ‘Lite’ gratuite bridée –

“Ce logiciel multiplate-forme conserve son interface quelquesoit la plate-forme employée. Sous Mac OS X, TNT fonctionne via X11. Le logiciel est assez intuitif, et a une interface plus aisé que GRASS GIS.

“Une version complete et gratuite du logiciel est disponible au telechargement (TNTlite). Cette version ‘allégée” a pour seule limite la taille des “projets” et l’incapacité d’exporter les projets sous d’autres formats propriétaires.

“Installation. Aprés téléchargement du logiciel ou a partir du Cd-rom, l’installation est ultra simple: un simple glisser-déposer d’un dossier en «.dmg» sur votre disque dur -.

“Documentation (PDF). Chaque fonction de TNT est détaillée dans un document PDF, fort bien illustré et accessible directement et en plusieurs langues.”

[and autotranslated into English]

“TNT & TNTlite – MicroImages – multiplatform – Limited version available for free (‘Lite’ version).

“This software keeps the same user interface whether you are on Win, Linux or Mac. On Mac OS X, TNT requires X11, TNTlite is quite intuitive and the User interface is much easier than GRASS GIS.

“A complete version is available for free (TNTlite) but project size and export capabilities are limited.

“Installation. Once the download is completed (or a copy from a CD) the install is truly easy: a double click on a “.dmg” folder and you are up and running.

“Documentation (PDF). Each TNT tool is detailed in a PDF, well illustrated and freely accessible in various languages.”

“Another interesting thing I've just been looking at (and I know this has featured in a few discussions, and [a name] mentioned that they're working on it) is the display time for a large drawing (75mb e00 file) of watershed basins (i.e. areas). I double clicked the drawing and it opened up and is still working away at displaying the basins (quite a while now) - in the meantime I've opened up TNTmips 6.4 and displayed it in there. The initial time was about 1 minute, thereafter redrawing took less than ten seconds (while Manifold is still not showing anything but the red dot in the right hand corner). I then overlayed the flowpaths (couple of tens of thousands of lines) on the basins in TNTmips, and again the initial display time was about a minute, and thereafter redisplaying, zooming in/out, etc/ takes less than 10 seconds. Selecting basins or flowpaths is almost instantaneous (recolouring the line/area as well as showing the attribute data in the table). How do they do it? I know this has been one of TNTmips' features for many years - very fast drawing/displaying of vectors and rasters. I've seen ArcView battling with less, and so do all the open source products (especially the Java products like Jump and OpenMap) that I've worked with. It takes ages for larger vector objects to display. I'm interested in how it's done - curious. I know there's a checkbox in TNTmips, when you import vector data: Optimize vector for display. Also, a process for optimizing old (pre 6.4, I think) vector layers. Any theories? What voodoo art do they use to get MSWindows to display these things so very quickly?

“Mmmh, no drawing yet - Manifold's still oozing along... :-) ”

[TNTmips 6.4 is now more than 4 years old, a long time in this rapidly evolving business.]

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