Hello faithful reader, I haven’t been posting much recently so how about a big state of play update from freejamesri:
Manifold 9: Ah impending upgrade I can almost taste you (yes I know, I’ve been saying that for the last six months); those encouraging signs I talked about last time are getting a bit stale, but they are still there. Like the party line now on Georeference, more on that later, I’m not going to speculate on when it’s released, other than it is likely arriving at some point in 2011.
Georeference (Official Manifold Forum): There’s been an overhaul over at Georeference, not a cosmetic one, but an ideological one – a continuing shift by Manifold to keep the threads on topic, concentrating on questions specific to Manifold the software and not the company’s practices or potentially flaming topics, although I’d consider a ‘where is Manifold 9′ topic both relevant and incendiary. Many of the old threads that got out of hand or went way off topic have been deleted, taking some good posts with them, Manifold has said they will try and restore some of the deleted threads if there’s been some good stuff removed.
The forum has certainly lost a bit of the community feel, but it still is and will continue to be a fantastic resource for all users. There are plenty of other avenues we can choose to vent our frustrations (a blog anyone?) although after a cease and desist order from Manifold there’s one less place to go – apparently due to the misuse of their logo resulted in the ending of MPUG Facebook group by the originator of the group.
There are a few alternatives for discussions that aren’t moderated so strictly:
The unofficial Manifold LinkedIn group
The Stack Overflow tag: Manifold
More ArcGIS 10 Thoughts: Been using it for a month and can’t say I’m blown away, sure the new GUI bells and whistles are nice, but why introduce new features that don’t work properly, here’s a quick overview:
Likes:
Data Driven Pages – great replacement for mapbooks and relatively painless updating old mapbook MXDs to use this feature.
Autohide menus – finally catching up with AutoCAD and Manifold with this feature
Dynamic Text – another feature that’s been available in other packages and ESRI has finally caught up
Built-in ArcCatalog – I’ve heard others don’t like it, but I haven’t had any issues and being able to create a new feature class without opening ArcCatalog as a separate program is neat
Dislikes:
Snapping – the new snapping tool is borked, failing to snap to objects for no apparent good reason. At least you can revert back to the old method
Editing features – for brand new layers/features the new Feature Templates are a big improvement, but for existing Layers it is hit or miss that you will actually be able to select them for editing
WYSIWG Drafting – not sure the actual term for it, but when I draw a line that has a wide line symbology it sure is pretty to see what it will look like as I draw it, but not very practical when I’m tracing features.
There’s a whole bunch of existing issues with ArcGIS that means I’m not ditching Manifold anytime soon, I’ll save that for another day, perhaps when I finally have Manifold 9 side by side with ArcGIS 10, I’ll do an extensive comparison of those issues.
Finally on a personal note it was nice to see a map of mine making it into a publication, Influents – Official Publication of the Water Environment Association of Ontario, Winter 2010 on page 35. The map was prepared as part of the report we prepared on the Assimilative Capacity Study for the Kitchener WWTP, it’s nothing fancy, but looks good to me. I didn’t know the map was going into this publication and didn’t have any input on how it was presented, which is a bit frustrating as there are several issues that would make it a candidate for Cartastrophe, which are mainly due to adapting a 11×17 report figure to a 5×4 map insert. It was completely prepared in Manifold, no stinking graphics packages were used.
That’s all for now, I hope to be posting a lot more once Manifold 9 makes an appearance, lets hope that’s soon!
hi
can i be a guest here? i think i am banned from the official manifold forum
emilio
No problem posting here Emilio, I saw a post from another Emilio asking about Manifold 9 on Georeference – the mods on there nuke just about all questions regarding the delay of 9.
Is Dmitri Rotow still with Manifol.net? I have not read any of his posts recently. Sad if I was a reason for his leaving Manifold.
Dimitri was still with Manifold a couple of weeks ago, on the forum we had photographic evidence of him standing outside their HK offices. Due to Manifold’s rules the thread he posted in was subsequently deleted. He doesn’t answer general questions about Manifold on the forum anymore and his previous essay length responses don’t fit with the forum’s regulations, perhaps he should start up a blog!
…some days after my above post the big D appears in a couple of threads, most recently: http://www.georeference.org/forum/t111525.10#111672
So how’s the newest release of Manifold coming along? Looks like you get what you pay for in the GIS market…
@ Jamey, I paid around $450 bucks 4 years ago for Manifold 8 and I’m still finding new ways to get spatial and data analysis done, I feel like I’m due a payment to Manifold.net tbh.
Four years without a new release? That’s laughable.
Not sure why people become religious about their consumerism’s habits. If you are geeky enough…write your own software…if not, just grab a free and open source software.