Geographics Read Me

GEOGRAPHICS by Dave George GEOGRAPHICS is a dynamic world atlas for the Macintosh. You can create maps either directly from GEOGRAPHICS or from a simple text file. Any map can be saved either as a GEOGRAPHICS map file or as a text (Merge) file. Additionally, you can build special point files which contain information about points of interest on the map. A map file called 'USMAP' is on the system as well as a special point file containing state capitals called (strangely enough) 'CAPITALS'. You can download them and play with them to see how these files are built and used. Basically, the screen consists of two main windows. The large window, or map window, should be viewed as a magnifying glass through which you're viewing a large world map. The scroll bars control at what coordinates the magnifying glass is positioned. The position of the upper left corner of the map window are displayed in the 'Top' and 'Left' fields of the top, or 'Status' window. Several other items of interest are displayed in the status window also and are described later. Coordinates on the maps are Integer Base 10. Western longitudes and Northern latitudes are negative integers, while Eastern and Southern coordinates are positive integers. This means that 25.00N 122.00W would be represented as -2500 and -12200, while 25.00S 122.00E would be represented as 2500 and 12200. There are two exceptions to this rule, however. When mouse coordinates are displayed in the status window they'll be displayed as positive integers followed by the normal notation for north, south, east, or west. Also, all coordinates in merge (text) files follow all normal conventions for coordinates including normal notation and decimals. Since coordinates are maintained as integers, the last two numbers of the integer, which designate the minutes of the longitude and latitude, are base 10 rather than base 60 as is normally the case in global coordinates. Therefore 35 degrees 30 minutes latitude (35.30N) on normal notation will be -3550 (60/30=1/2 & 100/50=1/2). Future releases of this software will incorporate completely standard notation. The Status Window The status window contains several fields and icons which keep you abreast of what's happening on the map. A 'Pen Up' and 'Pen Down' icon will be highlighted to tell you whether you map editing pen is up or down. Two boxes marked 'Long' and 'Lat' tell you the longitude and latitude of your cursor during map editing. The 'Length' box will tell you how many points your map contains (up to a maximum of 2000 per map) during editing. It also displays the length of a lines entered from the 'Measure' option. The 'Left' and 'Top' fields tell you where the upper-leftmost point of you map window is located in Integer Base 10 coordinates. You can edit these fields to place your map viewing window precisely, however, you must enter the values as negative and positive numbers without decimals. When you use the scroll bars to move …