IT-Enquirer - January, 2002

by Erik Vlietinck, Freelance IT-editor

MAPublisher 4 is Avenza's newest edition of the professional Geographic Information System (GIS) that integrates with either Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand. The latest version is available as a fully carbonized release, running seamlessly on the Mac OS X platform. For the time being, MAPublisher only works together with Freehand 10.

I had the chance to review MAPublisher once earlier, a couple of years ago, but I must admit I forgot most of the program, except its exceptional ease-of-use, even for a novice in cartography. MAPublisher 4 imports several of the industry's leading vector file formats, such as ArcInfo (.lin, .pnt, .pol, .e00), ArcView Shapefiles (.shp +, .dbf +, .shx), MapInfo (.mid, .mif), AutoCAD (.dxf), and USGS files (.opt, .ddf (but only the files with LE in the name).

Not being a professional cartographer, I decided I would try importing an USGS file (or rather, a bunch of them depicting OHIO state) without first using the tutorial. Of course, I forgot the file should have a 'LE' in its name and just tried to import the whole folder into MAPublisher. This caused a crash of Freehand 10, the host application. As MAPublisher really is a set of sophisticated plug-ins, the complete environment went down with it. This is frustrating, and therefore MAPublisher should be rock solid. I can honestly say it is, but the operator should definitely know what he's doing.

After an e-mail to Avenza with the (admittedly stupid) question why this was happening, I realized I had forgotten to only select the 'LE' files As soon as I corrected my import choices, the import went as expected. It took about 30 seconds before the entire state of Ohio was presented to me inside the Freehand 10 environment. Note that the map drawn is of vector quality, which means every detail is instantly zoom-able. I zoomed in to 1600% and could view up to street level.

The most interesting about the import capabilities of MAPublisher is that it automatically puts the map in the right place, the right scale and with the correct line thickness as well. Importing is dead easy.

MAPublisher is aimed at cartographers and designers who are capable of drawing maps and 'populating' them with relevant or attractive information. Users of MAPublisher are found throughout a range of markets which all have but one characteristic in common: they're all publishing. MAPublisher therefore has to be flexible enough to accommodate each and every one of the needs of these publishers. Hence import capabilities that are far beyond what the average user will need. A fine example is the grain function. It allows you to simplify the resulting Freehand file by thinning the detail based on smallest and largest distances between adjacent vertices.

Grain values can be user-selected, so the cartographer has full control over the loss of detail that is tolerable to him and his audience.

Point data such as population figures are imported in table format, requiring delimited ASCII text files containing these points. As GIS databases are always distributed in a 'lowest common denominator' format, such ASCII files are readily available from the cartography data providers.

Map attributes are one of the most important parts of any data set. They form part of a GIS map file and contain information such as street names and zip codes. MAPublisher allows users to search for and select items, create and place labels and create map legends based on attribute values or value ranges. With MAPublisher users can also edit these data.

Again, the editing tools MAPublisher puts at the disposal of a cartographer are fairly simple to use.

Editing values for multiple features in a single step is possible, but I found it too difficult for my knowledge of cartography to apply. One practical issue is perhaps worth mentioning: Formulas can't be entered by simply keying in operators and numbers through the keyboard. One has to use the mouse and assemble an expression within a dialogue window containing buttons. This is a detail, but it would be easier if the keyboard could be used entering the expression in the window.

Selecting elements on a map isn't done by selecting in the Freehand environment. If you do, you might quickly ruin your map. MAPublisher therefore has a large number of granular selection tools and 'filtered expressions' so you can select almost anything.

Images such as satellite images of parts of the earth's surface can be imported in an already present map. The image is registered and positioned in the right spot if you have a reference file. If no reference file is available, you must enter your anchor points yourself. The whole process is once again rather easy if you know what you're doing.

MAPublisher 4 contains viewing support for MRSID files (LizardTech). From within the viewer, you can export a part of such an image and have it saved as TIFF (and in Windows also .tfw).

The most impressing feature of MAPublisher in my opinion, is its vast support for projections and transformations. A map's projection can almost instantly be changed from one Projection Editor dialogue window. I tried out several of these projections myself, but failed to output anything but Mercator correctly. This was not due to MAPublisher's lack of features but to my lack of understanding of how the more 'esoteric' projections work and how they should look. It is at this point also that I gave up testing the program. MAPublisher allows you to use projections of all conceivable sorts, including those used by submarines to navigate under water. To me, these projections are utterly meaningless, except being the evidence of MAPublisher's professionalism when it comes to GIS.

To wrap up this review, I would like to stress the fact once again that I am not a professional cartographer. Many of the most powerful features of MAPublisher are well above my head. However, the features that I was able to understand and use to good effect, certainly deserve praise. I can't compare MAPublisher with anything else, but given the data sheets that I have read from other so-called GIS tools, it seems to me MAPublisher is doing something very right.

One thing that I am sure of, is that MAPublisher is well integrated into Mac OS X. It's not spectacular, but cartographers probably won't appreciate a lot of flashy interface elements anyway. MAPublisher never crashed on me (except for the 'LE' files thing) and when it did (the 'LE' thing), it only took Freehand with it. Also, Freehand or Illustrator are environments that are well-known to designers and easy to learn for scientists. They are ideal hosts for a system like MAPublisher. All this combined is why I strongly believe this program is a must-have for everyone who is professionally engaged in publishing maps and geographical information.