Code to generate poster prints from mappoint

**Mattys Consulting** · 04-27-2009

I don't do a lot of captures or graphics, I'm a developer and consultant.

Nevertheless, I've lowered my prices for captures to pdf since there seems
to be an interest. You can get them printed yourselves.

Mike Mattys
Mattys Consulting - Custom Programming

**blitzkriegoutlaw** · 04-28-2009

Thank you for the confidence

. Actually this little project started out when I could not believe that MapPoint couldn't print maps the size of posters. I tried some PDF or PS printer drivers, but they seemed to hang. I figure this would be something that would be common to do.

I wrote my initial program fairly quickly, but the project kind-of kept growing from there. In the mean time I got to spend more time learning about COM Office Addins, and C# (most of my main develoment is in C++ or Java so it was nice to try something else), and filling my nights in (we just had our 4th kid 3 weeks ago so my time is a rareity and only late at night).

Anyway, I have modified the program so that it no longer limits on the image size; However, if the total pixel width or height is greater than 18000 pixels, then it will output a warning asking the user if they are sure they want to do this. This warning dialog does not appear again after the user acknowledges it per program run. I also have added some program statistics (when the map generation started, ended, and the duration).

Let me know what you think.

**tonyt** · 05-01-2009

fantastic, this works really well....tried various sized maps....opening with microsoft picture viewer gives good options........ The additions are great too, really helps the program.

Congratulations on your new arrival.

**Eric Frost** · 05-01-2009

Just trying it for the first time.... does it work with MapPoint 2004?

It registers it and it appears under Tools, but when I click on it nothing happens and it becomes unchecked in the COM Add-ins dialog.

Eric

**Eric Frost** · 05-01-2009

In MapPoint 2009, I went to Chicago and put in 30 x 30 and 3500 pixels, I think it would take a day to generate so I aborted.

5 x 5 seems to be working reasonably! I'll post the map in a few minutes.

Eric

**Eric Frost** · 05-01-2009

By the way, I looked in the LargeMapGenerator.htm (in temp) and I see they forgot to update the CONTENT meta info since MapPoint 2004

HTML Code:

<HTML xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">

<HEAD>
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft MapPoint 2004">

<style>

It's clearly generated from MapPoint 2009 because of the copyright info at the bottom.

HTML Code:

<br><br>
<div class="copyright">
Copyright &copy; and (P) 1988–2008 Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/">http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/</a> &copy; Certain mapping and direction data &copy; 2008 NAVTEQ. All rights reserved. The Data for areas of Canada includes information taken with permission from Canadian authorities, including: &copy; Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, &copy; Queen's Printer for Ontario. NAVTEQ and NAVTEQ ON BOARD are trademarks of NAVTEQ. &copy; 2008 Tele Atlas North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Tele Atlas and Tele Atlas North America are trademarks of Tele Atlas, Inc. &copy; 2008 by Applied Geographic Systems. All rights reserved.
</div>

**Eric Frost** · 05-01-2009

Generating Panel (5/5) ...
Combining Map ...
pamtogif: computing colormap...
pamtogif: 37 colors found

Start Time: 5/1/2009 12:53:58 PM
End Time: 5/1/2009 12:59:00 PM
Duration: 00:05:01.3555176

Successfully generated map image!

By the way, I don't think it ever said where it created it... where is the output?

I saw in temp it had been pasting together an enormous file, but it's not there anymore.

Eric

**Eric Frost** · 05-01-2009

Sorry, I found it in My Documents.

I'm curious that the panels in the temp folder are all around 30 MB and the file I saw growing in temp was almost a GB, but this LargeMap.gif is only 3 MB...

By the way, neither the Windows Image and Fax Viewer (built into Windows XP) nor Internet Explorer can open it properly, but HyperSnap handles it well.

Looks great! I did notice that the current screen view when you start becomes the upper right panel. (I had the map over downtown Chicago). Would it make sense for the current map view to be the center? That's what I expected. Now that's I've done it once though I can figure it out. It might just be hard to visualize how many panels I need and the extents of the generated map. I guess I can always plan to do extra panels and then crop it in HyperSnap.

Anyway fun tool! Good work!

Eric

**blitzkriegoutlaw** · 05-01-2009

NetPBM is a fairly fat format taking up like 16 bytes per pixel. GIF uses a index compression, and since MapPoint maps uses very few colors, the compression is very high.

I was thinking about creating the tool's temp folder with folder/file compression enabled. These days most processors can compress/uncompress this kind of data on in CPU faster than in I/O (unless you have some kind of high-performance raid). You should see an increase in performance and a decrease in temporary disk space.

You specify the output file in the original input dialog. I'll modify the progress dialog to output the final file location at the end of the run.

I don't know what the worth would be to support MapPoint 2004. It looks feasible but is it worth the effort? I figure most people would be on 2006/2009 these days.

I'm not sure starting in the middle of the map will help you figure out how many panels you need. Most of the time its either trial and error, guessing, or over estimate. No matter what, you still would want to put the GIF file into an image editor to crop it, modify it, add copyrights (to be legal), swap colors, etc. I was thinking at one time specifying the panel width and height in geoUnits (i.e., miles) so you can figure out the number of panels if you knew the total map size in miles, but again I think trial and error would be the best approach. At least I added an abort button so you can stop the generation if things on the screen don't look correct.

One more thing I just throught of. The max pixel width and height for GIF is an unsigned short 65535. I can put a check in to make sure the width and height never go over 60000. A 30x30x3500 map is 105000x105000 size map, which would of definitely failed eventually.

Other than that, do you think we can call it good for now? If so, I can upload the project and people can make enhancements from there.

**Eric Frost** · 05-01-2009

Yeah it works and is fast and is very useful. From playing with it, I'd say it's good for now..

There is a vBulletin add-in "Project Tools" for shared development I've been thinking about adding to MapForums... http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=286380 do you think it would be useful for this?

By the way, do you have any baby pics?

Eric

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