February 16, 2007 04:24
I don't dispute any of the points that you raise above. In fact I wholeheartedly agree with you; my post wasn't to reopen the old vector vs raster debate. An S57 file can almost be regarded as a huge object-orientated database of marine information, of which a small subset (the most essential and relevant) is rendered in the form of a digital chart by MacENC (or similar software) with other information available for "drill down".
However, the point I'm making is that this rendered manifestation of marine data is presented and interpretted by the user as a "chart", and there are international conventions for for displaying marine cartography, particularly buoyage. These conventions have developed over the last few centuries with the sole purpose of providing a clear and unambiguous representation of the marine landscape; and they type of buoy it is, to my mind falls under your definition of important information.
http://www.charts.gc.ca/pub/en/products/...ctionQ.pdf
Let me give an example .
Without appropriate international "cardinal" symbol
The buoy is displayed as a yello square. The user has to click on a yellow buoy and scan through it's attribute properties in a window to see whether it's a north, south, east, or west cardinal in order to see where the danger is and to which side of it they should pass (pretty important!). If MacENC is being viewed on a cockpit monitor in a rolling sea, this would be difficult.
With the appropriate cardinal symbol
The user looks at the buoy on the chart, and see immediately from it's symbol in which direction the hazard lies (the vital data). However if they do want to find out more information about the nature of the hazard, they can still click on the buoy and view it's attributes.
The majority of vector cartography software vendors (CMAP, Navionics, MaxSea, Raymarine etc) adhere to these conventions when rendering charts because they're universally accepted. I might be wrong, but I believe that they are even mandated as a standard for ECDIS systems.
What I would personally like to see is, within the preferences window of MacENC, the ability to choose the flavour of symbology displayed, be it the US standard, IHO standard or, for underpowered users, the current MacENC standard. Presumably, a large chunk of the development time would be to encode the relevant symbols into a library in the relevant vector format (maybe SVG or something..?). I'd be more than happy to do that for the IHO ones if it would help.
I'm a massive MacENC fan, and I genuinely believe that its up there with the very best that the Windows world has to offer. However it's chart rendering, to my mind, isn't as clear as some of the other S57 products on the market which use the international conventions.
Of course that's just my opinion... ;-)
However, the point I'm making is that this rendered manifestation of marine data is presented and interpretted by the user as a "chart", and there are international conventions for for displaying marine cartography, particularly buoyage. These conventions have developed over the last few centuries with the sole purpose of providing a clear and unambiguous representation of the marine landscape; and they type of buoy it is, to my mind falls under your definition of important information.
http://www.charts.gc.ca/pub/en/products/...ctionQ.pdf
Let me give an example .
Without appropriate international "cardinal" symbol
The buoy is displayed as a yello square. The user has to click on a yellow buoy and scan through it's attribute properties in a window to see whether it's a north, south, east, or west cardinal in order to see where the danger is and to which side of it they should pass (pretty important!). If MacENC is being viewed on a cockpit monitor in a rolling sea, this would be difficult.
With the appropriate cardinal symbol
The user looks at the buoy on the chart, and see immediately from it's symbol in which direction the hazard lies (the vital data). However if they do want to find out more information about the nature of the hazard, they can still click on the buoy and view it's attributes.
The majority of vector cartography software vendors (CMAP, Navionics, MaxSea, Raymarine etc) adhere to these conventions when rendering charts because they're universally accepted. I might be wrong, but I believe that they are even mandated as a standard for ECDIS systems.
What I would personally like to see is, within the preferences window of MacENC, the ability to choose the flavour of symbology displayed, be it the US standard, IHO standard or, for underpowered users, the current MacENC standard. Presumably, a large chunk of the development time would be to encode the relevant symbols into a library in the relevant vector format (maybe SVG or something..?). I'd be more than happy to do that for the IHO ones if it would help.
I'm a massive MacENC fan, and I genuinely believe that its up there with the very best that the Windows world has to offer. However it's chart rendering, to my mind, isn't as clear as some of the other S57 products on the market which use the international conventions.
Of course that's just my opinion... ;-)