MapForums

I have created some Addins for MapPoint. It would be great if the next version would allow creation of additional toolbars, or at least allow additional buttons to be added to the existing toolbars.

Another thing that would be awesome would be the ability to add items to the context menus when the user right clicks on something in the map.

1) State selection = the ability to print one state without the surroundings
2) flexible shading colors (already mentioned)
3) UPDATABLE street, zip code, etc information without a new product release - please MS should we have to wait 2 years each?
4) simple layering system without significant increase in costs.
5) Better address name recognition
6) Did I mention updated data?!

Since this a a wish list...

1) Better GPS support
a) Voice output for turn-by-turn navigation
b) Voice inputs for hands-free interface
c) Auto-rotating map in direction of travel while using GPS
d) Auto-routing when off course
e) 3-D "birds-eye" view (near roads are larger)
f) Line-of-site navigation (with elevation, vertical speed, bearing)
g) Snap to road to make up for some GPS inaccuracy
h) Clear visual indications of upcoming turn (distance (maybe a progress bar), time to turn, large arrow indicating which way to turn, and info on turn to make (road name, exit number))

2) Night time color setting

3) Ability to drag-and-drop a created route to include a new destination

4) Runway layout for airports and maybe what class

5) When using autoroute, long road lengths show up as a single leg in the route instead of being broke up.

6) Better topographical data

7) Add option to include some scenic parts to route based on known scenic roads and/or topographical data such as lakes, rivers, waterfalls, valleys, hills, historical markers, etc.

8) Route with best cellular reception or a route with the least chance of losing coverage.

9) Maybe some options for truckers... routes based on road weight limits, weigh stations, least populated areas for hazardous materials, etc.

10) Grid overlay with latitude and longitude data

11) Ability to import land ownership data

1. Pushpin Sets that are on the "assigned address" NOT a random spot in the zipcode.
2. Pushpins that DON'T move!
3. Overlapping territories.
4. Better instructions to linking to Excel.
5. Radius circles that are more accurate.

These are basics that should be in this program.
Thanks!

1) Actual dates for trips (rather than Day 1, 2...)
2) Control over the print area
3) The ability to hide the previous or next days route.
4) More choices of orientation of the text for pushpins.
5) Proper language for Ottawa Canada. Ottawa is english, the streets are known by their english names, but MapPoint has the names in french.

John... Visio MVP

these are wishes for the mappoint control... (in no particular order)

1) map rotation
2) ability to get next turn based on coords sent to mappoint control
3) ability to set perspective for use to make 3d view
4) closer zoom with enlargement of roads at close view
5) ability to set background colour of map bg
6) fast routing engine with option never to disaply turns list etc
7) ability to query if coords are on route to enable re-routing
better sub-categorisation of POIs
9) ability to set colour of route
10) ability to get road data based on coords
11) route from coord on highway/motorway
12) speed limit data for roads
13) ability to link avoidance points, ideally with avoidance priority to allow link to traffic data database and allow avoidance based on severity
14) topology data. in a perfect world ability for this to show when perspective set
15) ability to import custom background to allow use of aerial photographs behind map
16) license to allow navigation software to be written in mappoint control at least for non-commercial or personal use (unsure whether this is disallowed at the moment 'Real-time vehicle guidance applications are not allowed' is surely guiding a vehicle itself though mappoint, not helping the driver)

1. Ability to easily change route sequence (Points order after getting directions)
2. Work in layers (to hide an unhide independent territories data).
3. Ability to import more than 10000 addresses and more than 8 different set of points at once.
4. Enter parameters to help the route optimization process
5. Avoid road features (rather than avoid a squere portion of area) such as toll road or congested highways
6. Provide some stats for re-routing (maybe a comparisson chart for different ways to set a route-scenarios)

I've been working on a project that integrates Mappoint and Visio. To do this, I use the mappoint ActiveX control, and the equivalent control in Visio. The difference in development approach and architecture is pronounced between these two, with Visio being very clearly designed to be used as a complete drawing system tool.

Visio apparently was architected as a complete drawing system toolkit, and the visio application was then written as a user interface that utilizes that toolkit. As a result, literally anything you can imagine controlling in visio seems to be possible. Any modification of user ingerface, etc. If there is something visio can do, or data it can manipulate, you can get your hands on it or adjust it in some way.

Mappoint clearly is a monolithic application with a thin ActiveX automation layer wrapped around it and, as such, it just can't offer anywhere near the precision of control that Visio can. Yet from all the questions and wishes I see here, it is clear that mappoint needs to be rearchitected as a mappint toolkit, with the application a UI wrapped around that. Then we can utilize that toolkit.

Right now there are a great many things that one can do through the UI only -- no object model exposes them. For example, I can't create a manual territory; I would have to write a file and then import it. Similarly, just about any sort of dataset based on a field set other than simple pushpins just can't be done any other way -- yet obviously the internal workings of Mappoint provide for this. That is, Mappoint must have a way to create such datasets, terroritories, etc, internally.

Of course the mappoint developers can keep breaking out more and more of the internals of mappoint and providing us an object model interface, but this is really a sort of band-aid approach to what is a basic architectural problem. The architecture of Mappoint is not very amenable to the type of total control needed by developers.

So my wish-list item is this: Give us complete control to hook every user interface action. Give us complete freedom to create, modify, read and delete every internal data structure relevant to mapping, such that we could completely recreate the mappoint application from these constituent parts and features. If that were done, then indeed we'd have the mapping tool that would suffice the broadest range of developer needs.

Currently MP has only COM interface to develop apps. This puts lot of pressure on Java developers to use some sort of COM-Java bridge.

If MP has web services interface, Java apps can directly use MP functionality without going through bridges.

The ability to plot multiple routes on a single map would be great.

Also I'd love to see EXIT SERVICES come back...we used that all the time...

__________________
Dennis Thurlow
OnScene Solutions
dthurlow@onscene-solutions.com
www.onscene-solutions.com