DJM Questor Software

Host: Club Cruceros, La Paz, B.C.S., Mexico
Base: DJM Questor Software

MarinePlotter Version- Release History

Released program versions:

To determine the version of your installed copy, select the program "Help" menu "About" command. The About Dialog will display the version number.

Version 6,1,4

Added a FolderManager program as an alternative to the CopyFolder program added in version 5. The FolderManager can move, copy, update, and delete folders and uses minimal random access memory (RAM.). The program and help file are located in the MarinePlotter installation folder.

Version 6,1,3

Fixed an error in the NCI Tile Cache Selector form that prevented the program from drawing the selected tile cache images.
Fixed an error in the Tile Cache Manager form. If a new attribution file was created, the program did not list the item in the Source selection list until after a program restart.
Fixed two errors in the NCI NOAA WMTS - Chart Tile Service form. 1. If you tried to download tiles for a single chart and the program could not find the attribution file, the program would freeze. 2. The Options menu Download charts -> Z1 to Z2 did not allow Z1 to equal Z2 for single level downloads.
You can now download tiles of the 50000_1 RNC in a tiles selection (lat,lon) rectangle. Reference the Options menu Download 50000_1 -> Select command in the NCI NOAA WMTS - Chart Tile Service form.
Fixed the Xtools menu User settings -> Make backup copy command. The command now works correctly for the option to save the settings, close, and then restart the program.
Fixed an RNC color palette initialization error.

Version 6,1,2

I changed the RNC chart drawing method to fix the RNC transparency drawing error. Based on Internet literature, I believe the previously used ColorMatrix values might have been incorrect. With the new version, the program can display all charts semi-transparently on my computer; however, I do not have a computer that can reproduce the reported problem and therefore cannot verify that the problem is fixed.
If the problem is not fixed, please report the error and provide the name and model of your graphics card and the version of your Windows operating system.
Removed all free public sample charts and tiles from Microsoft's OneDrive because of Microsoft disk space reduction program. Removed all sample chart download menu commands from the MarinePlotter and the help files.
Revised the procedure for downloading the NOAA RNC Tiles. To download tiles for individual charts, select the Tiles menu NCI -> NOAA RNC Tiles command. To open the form's revised help topics, press the keyboards F1 (Help) key.
The program will no longer draw the proximity ring when you click on your vessel or on an AIS vessel. The program will now display the ring when the mouse is over a vessel and will stop displaying the ring when the mouse moves off the plot window.
Fixed the program crash caused by a manual sort of the AIS Filter form table columns COG and ROT.
Fixed the vessel tracking failure when the vessel left the anchor alarm zone.
Fixed the Tracking Enabled check box in the Vessel Settings form. The check box was disabled accidentally with an invalid check for the existance of the MarinePlotter Copy.
When an anchor alarm occurs and because you can disable alarm sounds, the program will now draw a red line from the anchor zone center to the vessel's position and will optionally flash the alarm zone red and green.
Fixed the Alarms menu Silence alarms command. The program will (once again) enable the command when an alarm exists.
Fixed the GPS Signal Alarm delay option. The delay is to eliminate false alarms from transient lost fix conditions. The previous versions of the program used a default 20-second delay: You can now set a 1-to-60 second delay. If a Lost GPS Fix occurs, the program will wait the selected number of seconds and if a new GPS fix does not occur before the end of the delay, the program will announce the lost fix.
Fixed the AIS Signal Alarm delay option so that it works the same as the GPS alarm delay.
When the program encounters a Lost GPS Fix error, the program will now mark the vessel's last known position with a circled red-X.
When the program encounters a Lost AIS Signal error, the program will now mark all last known positions of all plotted AIS vessels with a circled red-X.
To make it easily to find the menu command in the long list when an alarm condition occurs, the program will now display a yellow-highlight around the Display menu Current alarm command.

Version 6,1,1

This version of the MarinePlotter provides additional clean-up of the geo-referencing procedures and provides additional Help topics.

Revised the Image Header Editor. The program now sets the chart scale to a default 1500000 value instead of 0. Some chart viewers use the scale to determine when to display the chart and not just the chart location outline.
Added the Warnings command to the IMG menu. The Warnings command is the same as in the RNC menu. Both the RNC and IMG file open methods share the same geo-referencing data processing; and as such, they both share the same Warnings options form and settings.
Repaired the Tweak option for the [N] [S] and [W] [E] buttons in the IMG Coordinate form. The incremental changes in the geo-reference coordinate (lat,lon) values did not change the current drawing after updating the image hdr-file data. These controls can now be used to tweak the image alignment and scaling relative to a GoogleMaps image.
Fixed the IMG Header Editor form's File menu View command. The command erroneously opened the image in Windows Notepad instead of the hdr-file.
Cleaned-up the VMG form and reduced the precision from two decimal places to one decimal place. Also, removed the inconsistant behavior of the View menu VMG command.
Fixed the longitude N/S display error to the correct values W/E. The error occurred only when the format setting was for DD MM SS.ss.

Version 6,1,0

Fix the repeating error message DrawImage ... Rasterized the chart. This error message indicates the chart image was too big to process as a single bitmap image. Typically, this message can occur only with 32-bit computers or 64-bit computers with only 4-gigabytes of random access memory. To turn-off the message, select the IMG menu Rasterize commnad.
Fixed the IMG menu Clip region commands.
Added to the IMG menu Clip region the Enabled, Make polygon, Make rectangle, Draw, and Clear. This change enables you to extend clipping outside the default reference coordinates. You can also, show a non-rectangular clipped chart area.

Version 6,0,0

This MarinePlotter version contains a method to convert geo-referenced images to RNC kap-files for use in other programs. Users can scan a paper chart to create a image file (BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF) and then use this program to geo-reference the chart and then to create the kap-files. Geo-referencing assigns pixels locations with latitude and longitude values to tell the MarinePlotter where the pixels are located in the real World. The MarinePlotter can then use the geo-referenced data to plot the image. The new methods make it fairly simple to create kap-files from paper charts or from copies of cruising guide charts.

The image hdr-files of this version are not compatible with the header files of prior MarinePlotter versions and the older hdr-files cannot be used to convert the img-files to kap-files..

Removed the IMG menu Convert command from the MarinePlotter. The command is obsolete.
Added View and Redraw commands to the File menu of the IMG Header Editor and added text boxes to display the geo-reference coordinates.
Added the File menu Create hdr-files command to the IMG Header Editor to sequence through a list of img-files to simplify the hrd-file creation of several images.
Added the File menu Update all hdr-files command to the IMG Header Editor to convert older hdr-files to the new hdr-file format.
Added the Convert to KAP file conversion command to the bottom of the IMG menu. The feature will convert geo-referenced IMG-files to the RNC kap-file format for use in other programs.
Added Velocity Made Good (VMG) to the Navigation bar and added a VMG form with adjustable font sizes.
The Time to go (TTG) value on the Navigation bar is based on the VMG value when using a waypoint or a route point Go To. Otherwise, the TTG value is based on the Speed over ground (SOG) value. The same applies to the Estimated time of arrival (ETA).
Revised the CopyFolder program and Help html-file.
Fixed the GoogleMaps Tile Cache Manager. The Folder button was not enabled when GoogleMaps was selected at program startup.
Added the None button to the Use points from group of the Tile Cache Manager form. To re-select a Rectangle area, click the None button and then click the Rectangle button.

Update/Release history version-5.