Global Mapping International
Global Ministry Mapping
System
What's New In Version 2.0?
This section documents changes from all versions published under the
Global Ministry Mapping System title.
Changes from version
1.5 to version 2.0
- License agreements have been changed - The changes allow greater
freedom in publishing language maps and to publish maps on the web and
in other electronic forms.
-
- Online User's Guide - User's Guide is now totally in
electronic form, and can either be accessed on the CD-ROM or moved to your
hard disk. The documentation has been extensively revised and expanded
to improve usability, particularly by new users. Major new or revised sections
include:
- Getting Started: New. A brief introduction to the GMMS System and the
on-line User's Guide.
- Quick Mapping Guide: New. A quick tutorial on how to do some common,
ministry-related mapping tasks.
- Short-course on Mapping and Geographic Information Systems: Introductory
material from the Atlas GIS reference manual.
- Atlas GIS Tutorial: The standard Atlas GIS tutorial manual, updated
to reflect changes in Atlas GIS 4.0.
- Release Notes (including what's new in this version): Extensively revised
to reflect changes in GMMS 2.0.
- Troubleshooting and Technical Support: Revised to include version-specific
material and Y2K issues.
- Appendix A - File Conversion Tools: New. Documents import/export and
conversion tools.
- Appendix B - Database Definitions: Gathers in one place documentation
of data tables formerly included in numerous text files on the CD-ROM.
- Appendix C - Layers and Other Features: Includes several detailed technical
notes on the structure of the GMMS data. Formerly included in text files.
- Appendix D - Descriptions of All Pre-made Maps on the CD: An index
to all of the map project files on the CD-ROM. Particularly useful for
finding maps on a particular subject when used in combination with Folio's
word search features.
- Appendix E - Cross-Reference List of Country Data Codes: Formerly included
only as a data table.
-
- Main Menu Program - A central "control panel" now
allows you choose the data location Atlas GIS will open, copy additional
data from the CD-ROM to your hard disk, or go to various parts of this
online documentation.
- Data Updates - Much of the over 500 Megabytes of data on the
CD-ROM has been updated. See Data Changes
elsewhere in these release notes for more information. A few of the major
changes are:
- Language data worldwide has been extensively updated, and are now considered
validated. Language layers have been renamed accordingly. A geo file merging
all the languages of the world is included (W_POLYLL).
- Updates have made to the first level political borders of many countries.
See Administrative Border Changes.
- The ISO 3166 codes have been updated for several countries in geo files.
- The Ethnologue table is now included in both a full and condensed form.
The condensed form is generally used in standard maps to improve drawing
speed.
- An attribute table for provinces (first-level administrative divisons)
(IMBPROV.DBF) has been included, courtesy of the International Mission
Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB). This includes a cross refererence
to the extended FIPS 10-4 first level administrative codes used by the
IMB, Campus Crusade, and several other organizations, along with provincial
capitals and populations for many provinces.
- An attribute table of the Light the10/40 Window - Strategic Towns,
(STRTTOWN.DBF) has been added courtesy of the Jesus Film Project. This
file contain a record for each strategic city including the name of the
country it is in, the MPTA (Million People Target Area), and where available
the population of the city.
- The major statistical databases (Ethnologue, Status of Global Evangelization,
Jesus Film Status, Joshua Project, and some world language and demographic
data) have been extensively updated.
- Project files for black and white maps for the Africa Set, India Set,
and Operation World (English) have been added.
- The Atlas GIS software has been upgraded to version 4.0.
- Major Features of Atlas GIS 4.0 include:
-
- Expanded Help
- The Atlas GIS on-line help system is much more comprehensive. Links
to details on how to use most of the new features of Atlas GIS are included
in the first screen accessed from the Help | Contents menu.
-
- 32-Bit Implementation
- Atlas GIS 4.0 installs as a full 32-bit implementation on 32-bit Windows
systems. This allows:
- Better performance
- Improved stability
- Better multitasking
- Improved compatibility with 32-bit printer drivers, database access
drivers, etc.
- Improved integration of maps into documents using OLE.
-
- Reports
- Atlas GIS 4.0 now provides report creation functionality through the
Crystal Reports technology from Seagate which is included with the Atlas
GIS 4.0 program. Atlas GIS's report capabilities allow you to:
- Create report template files from any data layers in your current project
and then open the reports into Crystal Reports for full editing and formatting
capabilities.
- Export the report from Crystal Reports into many file formats, including
HTML documents and Excel spreadsheets.
- Use selected record sets from a data source to create professional
reports with a pre-formatted report template.
-
- Supported File Formats
- Atlas GIS 4.0 directly opens the following file formats:
- Data Table Formats
- Excel spreadsheets (xl*.*)
- Lotus spreadsheets (wk*.*)
- Access database tables (*.mdb)
- Delimited Text files (*.txt)
- Paradox Tables (*.db)
- Microsoft SQL Server w Oracle Server
- Other table formats and servers supported by Microsoft ODBC
- Geographic File Formats
- Shape files (*.shp)
- Map Info Format files (*.mif)
- Boundary files (*.bna)
-
- Coordinate Systems
- Atlas GIS now supports over 1,000 coordinate systems previously unavailable
in Atlas GIS. This feature allows you the use of a coordinate system that
is most appropriate to the region represented by your geographic data.
-
- Increased Vertex Limits
- Atlas GIS 4.0 allows 32,759 vertex points per feature in the 32-bit
version and 6,500 vertex points per feature in the 16-bit version, as opposed
to 4,096 vertices per feature in all previous versions of Atlas GIS. Although
the current GMMS data set still works within the Atlas 3.0 limits, other
data sets and future data from GMI will take advantage of the additional
detail allowed by the higher vertex limit.
-
- Geocoding
- Expanded geocoding (assignment of geographic coordinates based on addresses)
based on street segments is included in the retail version of Atlas GIS
4.0, but not in the version included with the GMMS. If you need street
segment based U.S. geocoding, contact GMI for information about purchasing
the retail version of Atlas GIS.
-
- A Few Things Lost
- Unfortunately, a few features of Atlas GIS 3.0 were lost in the upgrade,
including:
- The Robinson projection (which is used extensively in the GMMS) is
implemented differently in version 4 than in previous Atlas GIS versions.
This has required separate versions of significant parts of the GMMS data
on the CD-ROM for use with version 4 and previous versions. If you have
geo files of your own data in the Robinson projection, you will need access
to your earlier version of Atlas GIS to convert them to the new Robinson
projection.
- AtlasApps (formerly called scripts) are unsupported in the 32-bit version,
and are only partially supported in the 16-bit version. The two AtlasApps
(Charts on Maps and Raster Underlay) included with version 3.03 do not
work with either version, and are not included in this release. ESRI has
personnel working on AtlasApp support for both versions, and expects to
make this upgrade available on its web site at www.esri.com/atlas; no schedule
has been announced. ESRI does not currently intend to resume shipping of
Charts on Maps or Raster Underlay; these may be available from third parties
once AtlasApp support is restored.
- The Windows Metafile objects placed on the clipboard by Atlas 4.0 generally
seem to work well with applications which only display and print them,
but seem to be harder for graphic editing programs, such as Corel Draw,
to interpret than Atlas 3.03 metafiles.
Changes from version
1.4 to version 1.5
- Atlas GIS software on CD has been upgraded from version 3.02 to 3.03.
- Installer has been updated to eliminate need to restart Windows to
make fonts active, eliminate leftover inactive DOS windows in Windows 95,
add support for Windows NT 4.0., and add an uninstaller for Atlas GIS.
- Project, geographic, and attribute files to produce or modify the new
World Regions map set are added.
- Province names and some city names for Turkmenistan have been updated.
- The Registry of Peoples and Languages has been updated to the 1997
version. Since the 1997 version no longer contains information on the Jesus
Film, an additional data table, JFSTATUS.DBF has been added containing
this information.
Changes from version
1.31 to version 1.4
- New preliminary World Language Mapping System polygon data has been
added for remaining countries of world so there is now worldwide coverage
of language polygons. Editing and updating was done to some other language
polygons and points.
- Updated versions of the International Mission Board of the Southern
Baptist Convention's Status of Evangelism data table and the Summer Institute
of Linguistics Ethnologue data table have been included
- The Joshua Project 2000 data table has been added along with an updated
version of the 10/40 Window map set. Project, geographic, and attribute
files for the Worldwide Perspectives set, created for the Perspectives
missions course, have been added. Color and black and white versions of
these sets are included.
- Project files in Portuguese have been added for the Operation World
set and many of the world thematic maps. The translation was done by SEPAL
in Brazil.
- Province borders for South Africa, Oman, China, and Saudi Arabia have
been updated.
- A worldwide geo file of coastlines and international borders, which
can be overlayed over the world first level administrative border geo file,
has been added.
- Minor edits have been done to city and geographic data.
Changes from version
1.3 to version 1.31
- Project, geographic, and attribute files needed to produce or modify
Introduction to Missions (English, French, and Spanish) sets are now included
on the CD-ROM.
A member of the Gospel
Communications Network