Some Anquet V6 notes

"GeoffC" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Some of my preliminary notes on V6 for those interested, particularly the
performance - a couple of
other people have reported the same thing. I wonder if others are finding
this too.

First though, a couple of embarassing problems:-

I ran the first installer to install the program, then the map installer
took over and said it
couldn't find the program it had just installed. It was looking for the
install location in the
wrong registry key.
Printing:- the drop-down list for orientation of the Print rectangle
is the wrong way round - select Portrait and it goes Landscape, select
Landscape and it goes Portrait.

But enough mirth, the important thing I found is the speed, or lack of it.
Unlike V1.2, V6 is a .Net
application as has been mentioned already, and it therefore installs the
.Net framework. This means
that V6 is compiled into an intermediate language MSIL and converted to
native code dynamically,
which must impact performance for an intensive program like this.

Comparing it with Memory Map for the common operations of scrolling the
map and zooming in and out,
it is very slow. MM always was noticeably faster, but is now much faster.
Zooming in or out one
level is near instantaneous in MM, but an hourglass appears for *several
seconds* in
V6. Scrolling the map in V6 is like dragging through treacle, with the map
juddering and the
hourglass appearing if you drag a bit too fast. This was despite using
108Mb of memory on my system
(MM was using 8Mb).

I was careful to compare them at the same zoom level, since all the
software packages scroll slower
as you zoom outwards. I don't know about the various features yet, but
this really is a pain for the
basic operation of perusing maps.

Incidentally, if anyone was wondering if I could work the same magic with
V6 and old maps as I did
for MM, forget it - the maps are in a different file structure.

Regards

-- GeoffC

Take out TheEnemy to email me

http://v-g.me.uk

I've just installed the "Great Britain on one DVD" package on my system.

I didn't get the install location issue, though I was careful to make sure I
didn't get a 2nd Autorun of the install when I had to re-insert the disk
after entering the serial number.

Printing seems to be OK - I get Landscape if that's what I chose.

Scrolling / zooming seems to be the same as the old version. I did look at
the cache settings, which had originally allowed 180 MB of memory for zoom
levels. Cutting this to the minimum gets this down to around 64 MB. This is
on a 1GB RAM system, I wonder if it's proportional to installed memory?

Zooming takes place as fast as I can click on the Zoom icon. Scrolling has a
slight delay, which is more noticeble at the smaller zoom settings (e.g.
anything lower than 33.33%).

Ain't tried the PPC install yet or seen what it's like on a slower system
(e.g. my laptop).

Data import routine seems to have worked though - all my old routes have
suddenly appeared, although Waypoints and Nodes are not differentiated,
which is a bit of a bind.

I like the new "hold the button down" route planning - gives continuous
routes, and will create "corners" if you pause long enough.

Anquet V06 - OSGB 1:50,000
1GB RAM, Athlon 2600, nVidia 4400

druidh

"GeoffC" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Some of my preliminary notes on V6 for those interested, particularly the
performance - a couple of
other people have reported the same thing. I wonder if others are finding
this too.

First though, a couple of embarassing problems:-

I ran the first installer to install the program, then the map installer
took over and said it
couldn't find the program it had just installed. It was looking for the
install location in the
wrong registry key.
Printing:- the drop-down list for orientation of the Print rectangle
is the wrong way round - select Portrait and it goes Landscape, select
Landscape and it goes Portrait.

But enough mirth, the important thing I found is the speed, or lack of it.
Unlike V1.2, V6 is a .Net
application as has been mentioned already, and it therefore installs the
.Net framework. This means
that V6 is compiled into an intermediate language MSIL and converted to
native code dynamically,
which must impact performance for an intensive program like this.

Comparing it with Memory Map for the common operations of scrolling the
map and zooming in and out,
it is very slow. MM always was noticeably faster, but is now much faster.
Zooming in or out one
level is near instantaneous in MM, but an hourglass appears for *several
seconds* in
V6. Scrolling the map in V6 is like dragging through treacle, with the map
juddering and the
hourglass appearing if you drag a bit too fast. This was despite using
108Mb of memory on my system
(MM was using 8Mb).

I was careful to compare them at the same zoom level, since all the
software packages scroll slower
as you zoom outwards. I don't know about the various features yet, but
this really is a pain for the
basic operation of perusing maps.

Incidentally, if anyone was wondering if I could work the same magic with
V6 and old maps as I did
for MM, forget it - the maps are in a different file structure.

No problems with installing National Parks. Completely done within 8
minutes. I've just been busy with my personal settings.
I miss some features of the old software, like creating paths before
creating a route. Paths give you more possibilities to build up a route.
With splitscreen the camerasymbol on the map isn't moving when moving the
camera in 3D. You have to leftclick on the mapscreen to get the symbol to
the right spot. I used to fly in virtual landscape using the mouse.
Adding (coloured)text with a (coloured) background to your maps seems good.
Other comments will follow with more experience of v06.

--
Theo
www.theosphotos.fotopic.net

druidh said:

I didn't get the install location issue, though I was careful to make sure I
didn't get a 2nd Autorun of the install when I had to re-insert the disk
after entering the serial number.

If you install either to the default directory, or the same name on a different drive, it works ok
due to its backup search algorithm, but anywhere else fails.
Printing the number on the disk itself was a laugh - not. I did the same, it asks for the number
from the CD in mid-install, when it knows very well it is in the drive.

Quoted message said:

Printing seems to be OK - I get Landscape if that's what I chose.

Does the black print rectangle that appears on the screen correspond to your choice of Landscape or
Portrait in the drop-down list?. Mine appears the opposite way to the choice I made - at least now,
I thought I had seen it correct some time before, I can't remember for sure but it is definitely
wrong now.

Quoted message said:

Scrolling / zooming seems to be the same as the old version. I did look at
the cache settings, which had originally allowed 180 MB of memory for zoom
levels. Cutting this to the minimum gets this down to around 64 MB. This is
on a 1GB RAM system, I wonder if it's proportional to installed memory?

Could be, and the power of the graphics card may well have a significant effect. The card in this
slave PC is pretty old now. MM must have some really slick scrolling algorithms though, it manages
to be lightning fast on this PC while using only 8Mb of memory.

Quoted message said:

Zooming takes place as fast as I can click on the Zoom icon.

Interesting, I'll have to play some more.

Quoted message said:

Regards

-- GeoffC

Take out TheEnemy to email me

http://v-g.me.uk

druidh said:

I didn't get the install location issue, though I was careful to make sure I
didn't get a 2nd Autorun of the install when I had to re-insert the disk
after entering the serial number.

If you install either to the default directory, or the same name on a different drive, it works ok
due to its backup search algorithm, but anywhere else fails.
Printing the number on the disk itself was a laugh - not. I did the same, it asks for the number
from the CD in mid-install, when it knows very well it is in the drive.

Quoted message said:

Printing seems to be OK - I get Landscape if that's what I chose.

Does the black print rectangle that appears on the screen correspond to your choice of Landscape or
Portrait in the drop-down list?. Mine appears the opposite way to the choice I made - at least now,
I thought I had seen it correct some time before, I can't remember for sure but it is definitely
wrong now.

Quoted message said:

Scrolling / zooming seems to be the same as the old version. I did look at
the cache settings, which had originally allowed 180 MB of memory for zoom
levels. Cutting this to the minimum gets this down to around 64 MB. This is
on a 1GB RAM system, I wonder if it's proportional to installed memory?

Could be, and the power of the graphics card may well have a significant effect. The card in this
slave PC is pretty old now. MM must have some really slick scrolling algorithms though, it manages
to be lightning fast on this PC while using only 8Mb of memory.

Quoted message said:

Zooming takes place as fast as I can click on the Zoom icon.

Interesting, I'll have to play some more.

Quoted message said:

Regards

-- GeoffC

Take out TheEnemy to email me

http://v-g.me.uk

GeoffC said:

If you install either to the default directory, or the same name on a different drive, it works ok
due to its backup search algorithm, but anywhere else fails.
Printing the number on the disk itself was a laugh - not. I did the same, it asks for the number
from the CD in mid-install, when it knows very well it is in the drive.

I installed to same Dir / different drive.

Quoted message said:

Does the black print rectangle that appears on the screen correspond to your choice of Landscape or
Portrait in the drop-down list?. Mine appears the opposite way to the choice I made - at least now,
I thought I had seen it correct some time before, I can't remember for sure but it is definitely
wrong now.

If I choose Landscape, I get a Landscape box and it prints in Landscape.
.. . .

Quoted message said:

Could be, and the power of the graphics card may well have a significant effect. The card in this
slave PC is pretty old now. MM must have some really slick scrolling algorithms though, it manages
to be lightning fast on this PC while using only 8Mb of memory.

Mate reckons that MM (v4) is fast until there's lots of routes /
waypoints stored, then it's like treacle (actually unusable). MM
response was not to have so many items open and to archive them off.
Sounds like they've fixed that for V5 then? Yet to see what Anq v06 is
like on a slow PC.

druidh

Equally, no problem installing two National Parks and DVD Central, but the
maps open with a blank space at the top where I want the icons to be! It is
possible to get them, but only by UNticking the icon option and then going
back to the menu to tick it again. The process
(View->Toolbar->untick->View->Toolbar->tick) is somewhat annoying to say the
least.

Albert Hayward

"Albert Hayward" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Equally, no problem installing two National Parks and DVD Central, but the
maps open with a blank space at the top where I want the icons to be! It
is possible to get them, but only by UNticking the icon option and then
going back to the menu to tick it again. The process
(View->Toolbar->untick->View->Toolbar->tick) is somewhat annoying to say
the least.

I had a toolbar at the start and in *tools* I could choose for small icons
(=more mapspace).
I tried to put a text on the map. A yellow rectangle was showing with the
text "put here your text". That IS possible but I couldn't remove the
original text. If I wanted to delete the text I also deleted the whole
waypoint.

I think Anquet will have to make updates for v06 to fix the bugs :-(

--
Theo
www.theosphotos.fotopic.net

theo said:

I had a toolbar at the start and in *tools* I could choose for small icons
(=more mapspace).
I tried to put a text on the map. A yellow rectangle was showing with the
text "put here your text". That IS possible but I couldn't remove the
original text. If I wanted to delete the text I also deleted the whole
waypoint.

The "Text" box should be at the bottom of your screen (below the map) or
below the Data box - unless you've selected "Hide". This is on the
"View. . . .Show Information" menu. Not immediately apparent, but this
means that you've a large text bos so you can paste in large sections of
text if you want.

Quoted message said:

I think Anquet will have to make updates for v06 to fix the bugs :-(

.. . .and I wonder how long that will take? I'd like to think someone
from Anquet was monitoring this forum to find out what problems users
are experiencing.

druidh

theo said:

I had a toolbar at the start and in *tools* I could choose for small icons
(=more mapspace).
I tried to put a text on the map. A yellow rectangle was showing with the
text "put here your text". That IS possible but I couldn't remove the
original text. If I wanted to delete the text I also deleted the whole
waypoint.

The "Text" box should be at the bottom of your screen (below the map) or
below the Data box - unless you've selected "Hide". This is on the
"View. . . .Show Information" menu. Not immediately apparent, but this
means that you've a large text bos so you can paste in large sections of
text if you want.

Quoted message said:

I think Anquet will have to make updates for v06 to fix the bugs :-(

.. . .and I wonder how long that will take? I'd like to think someone
from Anquet was monitoring this forum to find out what problems users
are experiencing.

druidh

On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:26:54 +0000, GeoffC <[email hidden]>
wrote:

I installed the National Parks CD this evening. I've
now run the program twice and it's crashed my PC both times. The first
time it happened when I turned on the Virtual Landscape, and the
second time it was when I chose 10% from the zoom menu.

Has anyone else had similar problems?

Also, does anyone else who has the National Parks CD know how to get
from one national park to another in it? I assumed there's be a choice
in a drop-down menu but there doesn't seem to be. There may be a
simple answer, but I've not yet been able to find it either by digging
around or by scanning through the Help file.

Wet fishes,
--
,,
(**)PeeWiglet~~
/ \ / \ pee AT [guessthisbit].co.uk

On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:57:59 GMT, druidh <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[...]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I think Anquet will have to make updates for v06 to fix the bugs :-(

. . .and I wonder how long that will take? I'd like to think someone
from Anquet was monitoring this forum to find out what problems users
are experiencing.

Presumably not, or surely they'd have intervened in the recent
discussions about the wording of their upgrade offer, to clarify
matters for their customers.

Wet fishes,
--
,,
(**)PeeWiglet~~
/ \ / \ pee AT [guessthisbit].co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, druidh
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Ain't tried the PPC install yet or seen what it's like on a slower system

The program is straight forward.

The writing of the 1:50,000 of Wales to SD card in the PPC took about an
hour !!!!
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, GeoffC
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

If you install either to the default directory, or the same name on a different drive, it works ok
due to its backup search algorithm, but anywhere else fails.
Printing the number on the disk itself was a laugh - not. I did the same, it asks for the number
from the CD in mid-install, when it knows very well it is in the drive.

Hee! Hee!

Come on lads - you're a lot better at computer things than I am ( a
confirmed dumbo) but even I spotted that and wrote it down BEFORE
installing.

WOW I did something right. :-)
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, theo
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

had a toolbar at the start and in *tools* I could choose for small icons
(=more mapspace).
I tried to put a text on the map. A yellow rectangle was showing with the
text "put here your text". That IS possible but I couldn't remove the
original text. If I wanted to delete the text I also deleted the whole
waypoint.

I think Anquet will have to make updates for v06 to fix the bugs :-(

If you open the First button on the left of the tool bar, click on the
text tab at the bottom of the screen, type over "put your text here" and
it appears where you want if on the screen.

I think :-)
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

"Peewiglet" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:26:54 +0000, GeoffC <[email hidden]>
wrote:

I installed the National Parks CD this evening. I've
now run the program twice and it's crashed my PC both times. The first
time it happened when I turned on the Virtual Landscape, and the
second time it was when I chose 10% from the zoom menu.

I've tried the 10% zoom but it took ages, better to go to 10% manually step
by step.
When creating a route you get a lot, and I mean A LOT, of waypoints. Whilst
removing a lot of them the program can give you a warning and ask you to
*continue* or to *quit*. If you press *quit* the program shuts down and you
have to restart Anquet. Very anoying.

Quoted message said:

Has anyone else had similar problems?

Also, does anyone else who has the National Parks CD know how to get
from one national park to another in it? I assumed there's be a choice
in a drop-down menu but there doesn't seem to be. There may be a
simple answer, but I've not yet been able to find it either by digging
around or by scanning through the Help file.

I zoom out or click on the GB map in the dropdown menu and go to another NP.
Don't know any other way yet.

If you create a route and you need to go *offscreen* you can push the
up-arrow (or L,R or down) on your keyboard like in the old software but
before moving the map don't stop the route with a waypoint but with a line
otherwise your route will go where you don't want it to go.
You can only *delete* the last stretch of your route by deleting. You will
need the remove waypoints to get you where you left off.
BTW where are the nodes ? Way to many waypoints now.

--
Theo
www.theosphotos.fotopic.net

"W. D. Grey" <[email hidden]> schreef in bericht
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>, theo
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

had a toolbar at the start and in *tools* I could choose for small icons
(=more mapspace).
I tried to put a text on the map. A yellow rectangle was showing with the
text "put here your text". That IS possible but I couldn't remove the
original text. If I wanted to delete the text I also deleted the whole
waypoint.

I think Anquet will have to make updates for v06 to fix the bugs :-(

If you open the First button on the left of the tool bar, click on the
text tab at the bottom of the screen, type over "put your text here" and
it appears where you want if on the screen.

I have all that but I can't remove the words "put your text here". It's a
bit silly to have a text on your map saying : Look out! Dangerous cliff !put
your text here ". :-(

--
Theo
www.theosphotos.fotopic.net

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005 08:08:03 +0100, "theo" <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[...]

Quoted message said:

I zoom out or click on the GB map in the dropdown menu and go to another NP.
Don't know any other way yet.

Someone pointed out that it's under Goto Map: there's a drop down list
of the various parks there.

Quoted message said:

If you create a route and you need to go *offscreen* you can push the
up-arrow (or L,R or down) on your keyboard like in the old software but
before moving the map don't stop the route with a waypoint but with a line
otherwise your route will go where you don't want it to go.
You can only *delete* the last stretch of your route by deleting. You will
need the remove waypoints to get you where you left off.
BTW where are the nodes ? Way to many waypoints now.

Thanks for that. I'll try again this evening.

Wet fishes,
--
,,
(**)PeeWiglet~~
/ \ / \ pee AT [guessthisbit].co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, theo
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I have all that but I can't remove the words "put your text here". It's a
bit silly to have a text on your map saying : Look out! Dangerous cliff !put
your text here ". :-(

I think you should have over typed the "Put you text here" annd that
would have got rid of it - pushed it over the dangerous cliff maybe :-)
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

"theo" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I miss some features of the old software, like creating paths before
creating a route. Paths give you more possibilities to build up a route.

They've scrapped paths? Well that confirms it then, I won't bother
upgrading. I'll hang onto my cash and see what PW puts on Ebay next.

Roy.