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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.