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Cartographica Version 1.1

1.1 will be the last major release to support the PowerPC and Leopard, all new feature development will be Intel-only and will require Snow Leopard.

Major changes

Big Raster File support

The 1.0 version of Cartographica worked well with small raster files (such as those for an area that you might download via WMS), but generally didn't deal well in terms of performance with very large files (5000x5000 pixels or greater). This version removes those limitations and has been tested with files over 5GB in size. We have also introduced a dedicated layer style window for raster layers that shows the current color palette and provides both a well to drop new palettes on and a way to describe the range for the color palette selected. This is particularly useful for data rasters, such as DEM, which contain floating-point or integer information instead of colors at each point. Along with this, we've made it so that two raster datasets (images or sampled data) that are placed in the same layer (use the Merge Layers function to do this after selecting the 2+ layers) use the same palette over the same range. In automatic mode, the range is the range of all images in the set. In manual mode, the range is determined by the user.

Editing

We've implemented a Merge Selected Features command, allowing you to join geometries. This will work best for overlapping geometries, as they will result in a single part. If the parts are discontiguous (even if in a very small way), then they will be considered separate parts and you will end up with a multi-part geometry.

Selecting

Another significant new feature is selecting from one layer using any other polygonal layer (either a selection therein or the entire contents of the layer). There are two modes for this selection: intersection (features where any point is contained in) and containment (features where all points are contained in the selection area). To use this feature, click on the layer to select with in the Layer Stack and choose Edit > Select On Another Layer.

Exploring

We have also added pop-up information windows. If you hold down the option key while moving over any item in the selected layer, a small window will pop-up with information about the item you are hovering over. What information shows up is dependent on the Layer Info panel. The "name" is determined by the layer's Name Field setting. Other data included is dependent upon checking off information in the field list "pop up" checkbox. This information is also exported to the KML exporter as part of a table in the Description block that shows up when you click on an item. There have been big changes to our filtering mechanism. Now, if you initiate a filter, you will see a drop-down area at the top of the Map View that contains a much more flexible seach system. And/or and multiple-field data filtering is now possible and easy with this new system. The existing filter box works as a short-cut, translating queries into the new system, which can then be edited.

Coordinate Systems

In the projection panel, we've reorganized the tree view, so that it provides a better browsing experience and have finally put the detail view to work showing the key parameters in available projections. Thanks to approval by the Canadian authorities, we have incorporated NTv2 support into version 1.1 to provide accurate mapping between NAD27 and NAD83 within Canada.

File/Data import

Vastly improved character set support in all facets of the program's import capabilities. MapInfo data sets now support the 3 supported character sets (WindowsLatin1, MacRoman, and Neutral). Text/Table import supports a variety of character sets, including automatic, UTF-8, WindowsLatin1, and others. If you are using a non UTF-8 character set, it's best to set that when opening the file. For Table import, we have also expanded control of how Cartographica interprets numbers and dates. Previously, Cartographica assumed that numbers and dates were formatted based on the system settings. Now that can be overridden to support a variety of other date and number formats. Particularly useful if the data set you are using started its life in another part of the world. The Table importer also gains manual and auto-detected header row handling (previously, it always used the first row of the file as the header row), and improved automatic detection of column separators (as well as the ability to specify separators manually). File import has also been tweaked for speed and better progress information. KML import has been enhanced to allow importing files that contain multi-geometry layers (previously this would cause an error, leaving the layer partially imported) which now load into one layer for each geometry type. We have updated our external libraries, including moving to GDAL 1.6.2 (the latest release), which improved support for BNA, GML, NITF, SGI, Tiff, ECW, XPlane. Further, we've made some changes to our code to better handle errors in some of the incorporated libraries, such as JPEG and ECW, that previously would crash with corrupted data. Due to a change in how we advertise to the system that we know about files, you should now be able to double-click on a lot more GIS file types and have them show up directly in Cartographica (many of them will import into a new map because we can't export to the formats, so keep that in mind when you're editing data). This also means that you are able to drag and drop many more files onto the icon of Cartographica in the dock--which opens the file in a new window. Not to be confused with dragging a file to an existing map document, which imports the layer into the existing document.

Export

Illustrator export has been enhanced to export the current visibility status, so you will see something closer to what you see on the screen when you export it to Illustrator. KML export has been enhanced to include visibility status of layers (and features, when hidden by style), use of the "pretty name" as the name for exported features (this can be set by changing the Name Field in the Layer Info window). Further, exported KML is "pretty printed" so that it's easier to follow if you are reading it manually. And lastly, fields selected for inclusion in the Pop-up window are automatically exported as the data for the KML description (the box that comes up when you click on a feature in Google Earth). We have also enhanced the Map exporter to optionally not export invisible layers, thus reducing the file size and complexity when exporting.

Analysis

Calculation of the nearest distance between the points in a point layer and the features in another layer has been added. This can be used to calculate nearest neighbor to objects in the same layer or nearest distance to points, lines, or edges of polygons. Note that distance to polygons does not treat specially the case of being "inside" of a polygon. So, if your point is 5 meters inside of a polygon, the distance will be 5 meters from the polygon, just as it would be if the point were 5 meters outside of the polygon. Kernel Density maps have been enhanced with the introduction of 5 new Kernel types: Quartic (or spherical), Exponential (Negative), Triangular (Conic), Uniform (Flat), Paraboloid/quadratic (Epanechnikov) in addition ot the Normal (Gaussian) kernel that had been supported in previous versions. Some of these kernels are quite a bit faster, owing to their ignoring points outside of their bandwidth(h).

Geocoding

Cartographica now supports Tiger/Line Shapefiles (those produced by the Census bureau after 2006) for Geocoding. To use these files, go to the Bureau's site and download the "All Edges" shapefile and then follow the usual instructions for geocoding. Specifics are detailed in our Knowledgebase article, Geocoding with TIGER/Line Shapefiles

Map Layout

Map Layout now has a simple Compass layout function. This provides an arrow, with optional text at either a manually-specified angle, or an angle that is computed by Cartographica. When using automatic, take care that you spot check it for validity, as it is a complex calculation. As with other text-containing pieces of Map Layout, you can also change style and text. The scale box has also received some new options. Units can be controlled and the scale itself may be restricted to a fixed size (in units) or tracks the size of the box. If you're using the fixed unit size and the box is too small, units are reduced by a factor of 2 until it does fit in the box.

Scripting

AppleScript scripting has been thoroughly re-tested and is working well again (it had been broken in the development release to date due to some structural changes).

User Interface

Changes too numerous to mention have been made to the UI. Many of these changes are subtle and help to make the UI more uniform, some are small features in themselves (like Zoom to Natural Fit for images). We have also created new icons for most documents, including adding a specific icon for the raster formats that we support.

Updates

For those interested in living on the "wild side", the Preferences panel now allows you to be prompted about newly available updates in the development and beta branches as well as the final releases. Release versions have been thoroughly tested, which isn't the case with either beta or development versions, so please be careful when using these. We try to test as much as possible between versions, but bugs sometimes get through, so back up your data when working with these versions (frankly, back it up anyway, that's what Time Machine is for!).

Significant bug fixes

1.1 contains a number of significant bug fixes for bugs that affected some users regularly. Unfortunately, the few common ones were difficult to track down and could not be immediately patched into the 1.0 codeline, so work-arounds needed to be used until 1.1. There has been a long-standing bug in mapsets saved with references to multi-layer imagery files. This could cause significant problems, especially if the mapset is loaded and saved multiple times. To resolve this problem, it will be necessary to remove the existing image reference layers and re-import them. We have also fixed a variety of undo-related bugs in Map Layout and enhanced the Map Layout undo titles to be more representative (there shouldn't be any more unqualified "Undo" menu items any more, so please note these if you find them).

Overly Exhaustive Change list

We'd like to thank all of our users and testers of Cartographica!