April 21, 2005 23:34
I agree. The situation's not quite as bad in the UK, but still not ideal. MapTech's charts don't seem to be updated particularly frequently...
The US have the right idea, the the NOAA providing S57 charts of all the US coastal waters for free. Their logic.. if the charts are paid for by US tax payers, then they should be available to US taxpayers.
Hence, the only native vector chart support on the horizon is S57 support within GPSNavX coming soon. That may suit US users, but, in the UK, there's a potential issue with S57 data being encrypted. I think we'll only find out if cartography is compatible once GPSNavX S57 support is actually released. And as you say, Aussie coverage is patchy.
As for the commercial cartography C-MAP and Navionics, it's unlikely that they'll be any Mac chart plotters supporting them in the near future; as both are proprietary standards, and do not offer non-Windows SDKs to developers. However, if we should loudly enough...
CMAP! Please release a non-Windows SDK so that the rest of the computing world can use your charts!
Once we've got a few more users on MacSailing.net, maybe we should launch a petition!
The US have the right idea, the the NOAA providing S57 charts of all the US coastal waters for free. Their logic.. if the charts are paid for by US tax payers, then they should be available to US taxpayers.
Hence, the only native vector chart support on the horizon is S57 support within GPSNavX coming soon. That may suit US users, but, in the UK, there's a potential issue with S57 data being encrypted. I think we'll only find out if cartography is compatible once GPSNavX S57 support is actually released. And as you say, Aussie coverage is patchy.
As for the commercial cartography C-MAP and Navionics, it's unlikely that they'll be any Mac chart plotters supporting them in the near future; as both are proprietary standards, and do not offer non-Windows SDKs to developers. However, if we should loudly enough...
CMAP! Please release a non-Windows SDK so that the rest of the computing world can use your charts!
Once we've got a few more users on MacSailing.net, maybe we should launch a petition!