Re: New Year's Resolution - MID/MID World Domination!(?)

[Warren Vick, Europa Technologies Ltd.]

Hello Neil,

> Here is a challenge to all you MapInfo-l regulars as well as 
> the lurkers.

Never been one to shirk a challenge. :-)
 
> MapInfo has a really great open data format known as MID/MIF.  
> It is so good that it apparently is increasingly used by the ESRI camp 
> followers as "the" way to get their data moved around when ever SHP 
> fails.  Having now watched the akeview-l and akeinfo-l sites for five months 
> there is essentially no problem reading MIF/MID by this developer and 
> user community.  We on the other hand, constantly struggle with E00 
> and SHP.

MIF/MID is handy because it's text. It's easy to read, even tweak to a degree. A 
bugger to match a 
geometry (MIF) record against an attribute (MID) record though.

> So to conclude in a nut shell what I know about SHP vs MID/MIF 

You've made some accurate comparisons there but I think it's not an apples to apples 
comparison. SHP is a usable format, MIF/MID is a transfer format. SHPs have more in 
common 
with TABs. 

> It is much quicker than MIF/MIF as it 
> carries indexization and a binary spatial object definition. 

A key reason while a MIF/MID viewer (free or otherwise) would just not work well, 
except on tiny 
map data sets.

> It [SHP] is not as efficient as TABs(?).  

About the same I'd say.

> MIF/MID is a ASCII file that has good metadata qualities that 
> can be extended.  

There isn't any feature in MIF/MID for expressing metadata. TABs can.

> Should we MapInfo-ites give up on MIF/MID and its TAB form for 
> simply depending on ESRI SHP files 

MIF/MID have really only been used to get data in and out of MapInfo. With the 
inclusion of the UT 
in MI-Pro and products like Safe's FME it seems that there is less (but not no) need 
for MIF/MID. A 
couple of years ago, I would go TAB->MIF/MID->SHP, now I can just TAB->SHP.

> Bill, how many utilities are there on your site and others 
> dealing with MID/MIF generation and importation?

In theory, I think their use will fall.

> Happy New Year

and too you. :-)

Regards,
Warren Vick
Europa Technologies Ltd, U.K.
www.europa-tech.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
"unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]