Mats Elfstr�m <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"On 01/04/99, the Midnight Mapper asked: Anyone out there interested in
building a shareware MIF2TAB.exe?"
And Mats replied:
Well, I just discovered that someone has.
Visit http://pages.infinit.net/danmo/e00/index-mitab.html for downloads and
more information. I cannot vouch for the functionality of this stuff, but it
passed a simple back and forth conversion test.
## end of quoted material ##
I downloaded the material Mats discovered and recompiled it to produce a
Windows DLL using Borland C++ Builder 4. (I just can't stand having to work
in a DOS command line!) Here is my "take" on the software:
1. The code is a very good start, but it is unfinished in several respects.
For example, the functions it provides are "read/create" rather than
"read/write." Thus you can create a TAB file from a MIF/MID, but you can't
open a TAB and add new objects to it. You (apparently) have to convert the
TAB to a MIF/MID using the Tab2Mif, delete and/or add updated objects (in
MIF/MID format), then create the updated TAB using Mif2Tab.
2. The software (apparently) doesn't do any "intelligent" grouping of
objects. Thus the objects appearing together in an object block (a type 2
record) are not contained in some minimal bounding rectangle (as they are in
a TAB built by MapInfo itself).
3. The conversion from external floating point coordinates to internal
integer format is based on the minimum bounding rectangle of the contained
data rather than limits that allow arbitrary coordinates anywhere on the
ellipsoid. Thus, if you use MapInfo to update a TAB created by MITAB you will
find that no data can be added outside the bounding rectangle of the original
data. (Fortunately, fixing this problem in MITAB is rather simple.)
However, given these reservations, I believe this is an excellent start
toward an "open" set of software for working with data in Mapinfo "native"
format. And, of course, just having a Mif2Tab and Tab2Mif capability (albeit
experimental) is a big step forward in itself.
Robert Edwards
The MapTools Company
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