[BC] BCmap suggestions

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 08/23/2006 2:03:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tonne at comcast.net writes:

> > How difficult would it be to add a feature that lets you re-center the map
>  > with, say, a right-click?
>  
>  On this polar plot, a b****!  The other mapping program (Pizza) allows you
>  to go to a rectangular plot, do what you want, then switch back to the
>  polar plot for presentation.

Ok, how about this idea: A rough "grid" of lat/lon values stored as a simple 
"table". When you click on the map, you aren't centered exactly where you 
clicked, but you are brought to the lat/lon values in the table, which are "close 
enough". (Exact centering really isn't required.) The screen X/Y coords would 
simply be rounded to the nearest, say, 50 or 100 pixels, and then that would 
bring up the lat/lon values from the table. (It would call the "home" routine 
to re-plot, but would save the original "home" data, so it could be restored.)

BTW, the X/Y centering could be even rougher than that! Divide the screen 
into 16 squares, 4x4, and wherever you click within one of those squares, it 
re-centers based on the lat/lon values assigned to the center of that square. This 
would make it easy to see the stations that fall off the left edge when I'm 
zoomed to New England, for example. (I can usually see them if I zoom WAY out, 
but that's a pain.)

>  > Or to bring up the "Get data" screen simply by
>  > clicking on a station's "+" mark?
>  
>  Same problem as in the previous paragraph.  We would have to read
>  the pixel X and Y coordinates and do simple arithmetic to change those
>  numbers to latitude and longitude.  On a rectangular plot this is easy.
>  Not easy on a polar plot

Maybe not as complex as it seems! Tables to the rescue, again! As the 
software is plotting the stations, it's obviously generating those X/Y coords in 
order to place the + marks (and call letters) onto the screen. When it does so, 
save those X/Y coords into a table. When the user clicks, all you'd need to do 
is search that TABLE for the nearest x/y to their click, and that could be used 
in a manner similar to the above- the table links to the lat/lon and then you 
can call the routine to re-plot/zoom.

BTW, if I'm completely off-base, here, just let me know. :) My programming 
skills are limited to some simple ML and BASIC, that's about it... but I've made 
plenty of cool little conversion programs that relied upon tables. Nowadays, 
big tables are not a problem like they were in the days of 64K memory spaces. 
;)

>  > Can the "show all" be configured so that it will
>  > automatically re-plot when you zoom in/out?
>  
>  That would indeed be nice.  Probably doable and all it would take
>  is time.  I am kinda busy with potentially lucrative stuff right now.

That makes perfect sense. :)

>  Oh yes.  Overnight there were 70 more downloads of the program.
>  We're up to 572 now.
>  
>  - Jim Tonne

Excellent! Obviously, folks on this Forum have been following our discussion, 
and wondered what all the excitement was about. ;) It's a really *cool* 
little utility!

Oh! I just had another idea that is very necessary, and should be *really* 
easy to implement: "Center" for the Zoom and the Size functions. This would be 
most important for the pattern sizes, really... so that we can quickly and 
easily get back to the "100%" reference, rather than trying to guess if we have it 
right, or try to count the "zooms" in /out to get to "center".

Another nice addition would be "up/down" buttons that *erase* and re-plot. 
Also, letting the "ENTER" key default to the "top button" in the data-entry 
dialogs.

Keep up the great work! It's not often that we get a really *nice* "toy" like 
this to diddle with. ;)

Willie...