To help those that are cataloging the comparative differences between Maptitude & other products, from file reference file of past comparative articles, here are some published comparisons that I have come across in the past:
- 1. Lewis, Sylvia. "Package Deal", in Planning Magazine, July, 1998, p. 11. Discussion of Maptitude-based "Community 2020" software developed for U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development.
- 2. Culpepper, R. Brian. " Desktop GIS for Business Geographics" in Business Geographics Magazine, May 1998, pp. 32- 38. Article compares Maptitude 4.0 with ArcView Business Analyst (ESRI), GeoMedia 2.0 (Intergraph), Tactician 4.1 & Targeter (Tactician Corp) and MapInfo Professional 4.5 (MapInfo). Article conclusion: "Maptitude clear value winner".
- 3. Thrall, Grant Ian, "New Generation of Mass-Market GIS Software: A Commentary" in Geo Info Systems magazine, September 1995. Article discusses more the theory of comparative software evaluation in the context of business geography.
- 4. Thrall, Grant Ian; del Valle, Juan and Susan Elshaw-Thrall, "First Impressions: Four Mass Market GIS Programs", in Geo Info Systems magazine, September 1995. Article compares Arcview 2.0b, Maptitude 3.0 (Beta release), MapInfo 3.0, AtlasGIS.
Kevin Byrnes
"Richard E. Hoskins" wrote:
Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.htmlIndeed, Reinaldo, I do not think you are talking too much ... I can't say I'll do a super complete job of a comparison of Maptitude and AV or MI, but at least will be able to collect enough info to help people make a better decision. If others contribute to the comparison and the elucidation of the differences, that would be helpful. My concern as a public health official in a state agency is making sure people get what they need for their GIS tasks and pay a reasonable price. I know Maptitude a lot better than MI or AV, so my assessment may be appear biased in the end - I just can't get over getting what I need and more for $400 when others offer less for over $1000 - but there are features I need for public health work (all of which you pointed out) and I am yet to find in AV or MI. Maybe as I dig deeper they will appear - disguised as something else, etc. I think Caliper ought to listen/respond to : "We still miss the possibility of translating the words Meters and Kilometers in the legend; the possibility of using two datum's for Brazil and South America (Corrego Alegre and South American Datum 1969 or SAD 69 as it is currently known); and the possibility to set in the Preferences, the size of the zoom when locating by address or by other methods... "As I am aware Caliper is interested in non-North American versions of Maptitude (A Spanish version exists), so they might come up with something more. Richard Hoskins[EMAIL PROTECTED]-----Original Message-----Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html
From: Reinaldo Paul Pérez Machado [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 4:36 PM
To: Maptitude
Subject: Re: [Maptitude] Shape to Maptitude
Hi Richard:
Some time ago, I believe it was when Maptitude 4.0 was released, my students at University of São Paulo, where I teach GIS, Cartography and Remote Sensing, found in the Internet a very interesting article that was a comparison among AV 3.0, Mapinfo and Maptitude. They provide a print copy of it, but I could never found the original on the Internet, nor the source. I believe that article could be a very good starting for your idea, because it was a very deep comparative testing using, if I do not remember wrongly, exactly the same data sets for the three products, in exactly the same hardware and OS.
For me it was really a surprise, because I have heard many times in conferences and so on that this three products belongs to the same category of "desk top mapping systems" which could be true for AV and MI but is certainly not for Mapt. Maptitude is a real GIS with complete topology, I new that regarding MI, but I have to admit that I did not know that AV did not have that "little" detail. What I consider unfair is that this three products are analyzed together seen them through the same looking glass. Saying that these software's are good just for thematic mapping, and not suitable for analysis, specially because they do not have topology, and must of all because of the "limitations" of PC and desktop software's in handling big databases. That could be true with certain restrictions for the other two, but certainly it is a lie when talking about Maptitude.
We currently use Maptitude here for very complex geographic analysis (including intensive using of overlaying, buffering, merge by value, areas of influence, select by location, taging, shortest paths, etc.), and we use really huge databases, i.e.
1.- All the blocks of the City of São Paulo (more than 65,000) with a attached binary table with about 100 fields with socio-economic data, must of them with numeric values.
2.- The Street network (more than 155,000 links) with all the required fields for geocoding, including drive directions, plus 20 other fields, full of relevant data.
This two are used combined with more than 20 other layers, containing, Satellite Imagery, Hidrography, Contours, Zoning, Land Use, Districts, Census Tracks, Land Value, and more than a million dots representing points of commerce or services, that where previously georeferenced using Mapt standard geocoding facilities.
Well, we do play with this babe using standard Maptitude 4.1 and a PC Pentium III with 128 Mb of memory (we have found that memory is more important than speed).
I am not going to mention here (I believe the above mentioned article does) the amount of US and World Data which is provided with Mapt with not additional cost, because for us that data (specially US) it is not relevant, but I can say that Caliper have invest a lot of effort in the past years for gradually increase the "international" capabilities of Maptitude, providing better address matching abilities in non American Addresses; the possibility of Geocoding with a "normal" compact file (CDF), instead of using just the "special" Street File; implemented some projections used down here, or in other parts of the world; and the possibility of creating geographic files for the Southern Hemisphere; to mention the must relevant for us. Congratulations! they have made a beautiful job, I hope they do not stop. We still miss the possibility of translating the words Meters and Kilometers in the legend; the possibility of using two datum's for Brazil and South America (Corrego Alegre and South American Datum 1969 or SAD 69 as it is currently known); and the possibility to set in the Preferences, the size of the zoom when locating by address or by other methods... Whaoo! I think I have talk to much.
Best regards,
Reinaldo
"Richard E. Hoskins" wrote:
Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.htmlI figured it out after applying my vast knowledge of projections (that is I tried a bunch until it worked ..) it is State plane 83 CA zone 1 (or close). Why AV plays around with projections like it does is a mystery. We need to give a collective thank you to Caliper for not putting us through this projection misery that ESRI insists that AV users endure. For "fun" I am learning AV from one of the ESRI books and comparing Maptitude exercise for exercise ..(so I need the AV files) see which does what the other doesn't etc. I have this weird idea that my agency should be spending $400 rather than $1400 for GIS software (guess I'll never go far in government wanting to save taxpayer money ...) so its time to quantify the differences. Also I got a 1/2 done project dumped on me that was in AV. In needs to be finished in AV although I completed the project in 1 hour in Maptitude. Actually it would have been in 20 minutes but most of the time was spent figuring out the projection mess. One layer was a squeezed WA state county map overlaid on a squashed WA state census map with hospitals out in the Pacific ocean. It might be worth putting on the web site some comparison table. If others want to send me their comparisons, I will compile them and try to verify them along with the list I am developing. Richard Hoskins[EMAIL PROTECTED]-----Original Message-----Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.htmlI have some AV shape files in some arbitrary coordinate, some tutorial files from an instruction book. I want to read them into Maptitude but Maptitude balks. They are read in but I get a message that the database is empty, that it might be the wrong coordinate system, etc. Is there a way to import shp files into Maptitude in which the coordinates are some arbitrary type? In AV the projection is not recognized as anything. Not decimal degrees. Any ideas? thanks ... Richard Hoskins[EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Richard E. Hoskins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 7:24 AM
To: Maptitude
Subject: [Maptitude] Shape to Maptitude
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