Welcome
to another issue of the MP2Kmag
Update. Both MapPoint 2009 North America and Europe are now shipping. See
below for more information. This issue includes five new articles
published since our last
newsletter, many with sample code. Note that forum highlights are now
published under a separate MapForums Newsletter, the most recent of
which are archived online.
MapPoint User
Survey. The MapPoint Team at Microsoft is eager to hear your
thoughts
about what new features should go in future versions of MapPoint! Fill
out the brief survey by midnight Tuesday, March 17th for a chance to
win one of fifty $25 Amazon gift certificates. More details
below. MP2K Magazine is your source for independent news and
information about
MapPoint and Virtual Earth technologies and we also host
the popular web forum
for MapPoint users and developers ( www.mapforums.com). This
issue features three articles by Richard Marsden as well as articles by Matt
Fritz and Marvin Hlavac.
This Issue's Contents at a Glance - Functional Programming with MapPoint and F#: Part 1, by Richard
Marsden - Calling
MapPoint from C# with Late Binding, by Richard
Marsden - Roll
Your Own Commercial Routing System with MapPoint, by Matt
Fritz - Shape Name
Utility, by Richard Marsden - GPS and Other New
Features in MapPoint 2009, by Marvin Hlavac Happy Mapping and
please forward this newsletter to anyone who would be
interested!
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MapPoint
2009 North America and Europe
Need more
licenses or haven't upgraded yet?
Both MapPoint 2009 North
America and Europe are now shipping.
Each order will also include a
free one year Plus Membership on MapForums, the MapPoint and
Virtual Earth discussion forum - $76 value.
Free
USPS Priority Shipping within the United States, $35 shipping to Canada, and
$75 for other international orders. See our recent MapForums
newsletter for links to order including payment processing options for both
Plimus and Paypal.
Update your MapPoint maps to the latest digital map databases!
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 MapPoint User Survey
Dear
Microsoft MapPoint User: The
MapPoint Team is conducting a short survey to learn more about your
organization’s use of Microsoft MapPoint to support your mapping,
routing and data analysis needs. In exchange for your
valuable time and feedback, we will include your name in a drawing for
a chance to win one of 50 Amazon.com gift certificates valued at $25
each. To start the survey, just click on the “ Begin
Survey” link below or paste the following link into your
browser’s address field: http://www.info
solutionsgroup.com/Surveys/MapPoint_3/. Please complete the survey
by midnight EST, March 17, 2009. Begin Survey If
there is another individual within your organization who is more
qualified to answer this survey, please forward this email to
them. Sincerely, The MapPoint Team
MapForums NewslettersWe
have sent out a number of newsletters to registered MapForums users
over the past several months. They are posted online along with the
MP2Kmag Update in the newsletter
archive. MP2K
Magazine Twitter Channel
Interesting news items and updates
for MapElves, MapForums, and MP2K Magazine are posted to our twitter channel
at http://twitter.com/mp2kmag.
Here's the original announcement on MapForums regarding the launch of
our twitter channel.
 Get
Published in MP2K
Magazine
If you have a MapPoint presentation, neat programming
technique, or
would simply like to share the ways in which you are using MapPoint
technology or any other ideas, contact us to discuss how we can turn
your knowledge into
an article and share your experience with the rest of the MapPoint
community of users and developers.
Thanks to Marvin
Hlavac for allowing us to use the
picture on the right of his Maltese puppy eating from the MapPoint
mug. |
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| Articles
Functional Programming with MapPoint and F#: Part
1
The
first of two articles by Richard Marsden on MapPoint and F#. Recently
released as a full product by Microsoft, F# can be used as a functional
language or as an imperative or object-oriented language, and is useful
for multi-threaded programming.
"F# is functional language
for the .NET framework that is based on OCaml. Originally developed by
Microsoft Research (Cambridge), it has recently been released as a full
product by Microsoft. Functional programming has been favored by
academia for a long time, but it has never expanded beyond niche
applications in the commercial world. Although functional programming
promises to be safer, the lack of supporting libraries and standard
inter-language interfaces has been a major hurdle. F# might prove to be
a major force in the adoption of functional programming. F#
programs can easily access the entire .NET framework, and are about as
fast as comparable C# programs. F# is also multi-paradigm. It can be
used in a functional manner, but it can also be used as an imperative
or objective oriented language. This allows you to easily switch to the
most appropriate paradigm for the problem at hand."
 Full
article text  Discuss
this story
Calling MapPoint from C# with Late Binding
Richard
Marsden shows how to call MapPoint from C# using late binding or
dynamic invocation. Late binding has a number of advantages in certain
scenarios including being about to support multiple type
libraries.
"There are a number of
articles on MP2K Magazine about using MapPoint from a variety of
different languages. Most if not all of these articles use early
binding to reference the MapPoint COM objects, because this is usually
the easiest way of working with COM and it tends to be safer due to
compiler checking. Early binding is also slightly faster due to all the
references being hard-coded. However there are times when late binding
might be more appropriate. This article shows you how to call MapPoint
from C# using late binding. Late binding is also known as "dynamic
invocation". What is late
binding?Early
and late binding refer to how the code refers to the MapPoint COM
objects. Early binding is performed at compile time and is essentially
‘hard-coded’. " Full
article text Discuss
this story | advertisement
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Roll Your Own Commercial Routing System with
MapPoint
Matt
Fritz shares his experience developing a routing application including
discussion of MapPoint's strengths and limitations. The articles
includes several screenshots illustrating the various components of the
routing application.
"Everyone is familiar with
vehicle routing from point A to point B, perhaps applying additional
criteria like ‘highway or scenic’, routing around known
construction
areas, and perhaps inserting a stop (waypoint) or two along the way.
But suppose you needed to route 100 vehicles to 3000 locations where
the list of locations changed daily, many locations had a ‘time
window’
dictating an acceptable arrival time, the amount of time spent at each
waypoint varied, and the total duration of each route needed to be no
less than 8 hours but no more than 8 ½ hours.
Commercial vehicle
routing adds a bit more complexity to the routing problem. Solving this
problem through software as been the elusive brass ring, in part
because there is no ‘right’ answer – only a set of
‘best compromises’.
Commercial routing systems usually offer a toolbox rather than a black
box solution, (regardless of marketing claims to the contrary).
Commercial routing is often a partnership of tools and human
intervention. "
Full
article text Discuss
this story
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| Shape Name Utility
The Shape Name Utility is a simple utility developed by Richard Marsden
that allows a user to examine and/or change the names of MapPoint
shapes. This article describes the code and how it works.
"The Shape Name Utility
has been released as freeware and as open source under the Berkeley
license. An installer, and a source code archive can both be downloaded
from the Mapping-Tools.com website at:
http://www.mapping-tools.com/shapename/index.shtml
The
following source code description can be used as a form of tutorial for
those who want to build a MapPoint add-in using Visual Basic 6. As well
as Visual Basic 6, the project uses NSIS for building the installer,
and Help & Manual for the documentation. NSIS is open source, but
Help & Manual is a commercial system. Both are good products, but
you do not need either of them in order to build the project and to
install it on your development PC. After saying this, it is strongly
recommended that you use an installer if you wish to distribute your
add-in on multiple PCs."
Full
article text Discuss
this story GPS and Other New Features in MapPoint 2009
Originally
written for Laptop GPS World, this review of MapPoint 2009 focuses on
users of GPS navigation. If you have questions about other aspects of
this product, please address them to Map Forums.
"In this article I take a look
at MapPoint 2009 and outline the major differences compared to MapPoint
2006. MapPoint 2009 Map data
MapPoint
2009 now has approximately 2 years fresher map data than the previous
MapPoint 2006 version. In the North American version of MapPoint 2009,
beside the usual USA and Canada data, I now see a huge improvement in
Mexico. While the address find feature is still not functional for
Mexico, the country now does contain street-level map coverage for even
many smaller towns. Are you planning a vacation in Mexico soon?
Microsoft MapPoint 2009 is the only GPS product that I'm aware of, that
actually does include navigable map data for popular tourist
destinations including locations such as Acapulco, Ixtapa, Mazatlan and
Puerto Vallarta."
Full
article text Discuss
this story
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Look
forward to
upcoming issues in which we focus on recent MapPoint and Virtual Earth
news and share forum highlights.
Previous issues of
the MP2Kmag Update are available in
the newsletter
archive.
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1999-2009 MP2K Magazine |
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