DJM Questor Software

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

MarinePlotter Version-3 Release History

See also: Known Problems.

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 3,1,6

• Fixed the problem with the program loading the coastline data even though the coastline was not enabled in the Graphical Chart Selector form.
• Fixed the non-funtsioning CPA check. The CPA check is now done once a second.
• Fixed the MCG proximity alarms so they work the same as the ENC alarms.
• Fixed the ENC proximity alarms so only the closest objects are displayed. The program will still display the closest objects in the proximity alarm zone such as both the closest depth sounding and the closest depth contour line point that violates the min-safe depth.
• The alarms for depth and proximity now stop when the vessel begins to move away from the objects. This also applies when the vessel is moving backwards.
• Fixed the Depth alarm sound and voice on/off options so you can turn off the sounds.
• Changed the E N C proximity alarms to Chart alarms to accommodate MCG charts.
• Fixed the Help: The wrong Help chm-file was added to the MarinePlotter 3,1,5 Setup.

Version 3,1,5

• I accidentally released MarinePlotter 3.1.4 with a requirement for Microsoft .Net Framwork 4.5 that I used to find a program "memory leak". This release removes the .Net 4.5 requirement so that the MarinePlotter 3,1,5 will run as before with Microsoft .Net Framework 4 or greater.
• Fixed the AIS form serial port Close button problem. Under some conditions the button was not enabled.
• Revised the the AIS Filter form's file save and restore your Alarm and COG settings of selected MMSI entries.
• Revised the display of an AIS object range ring. If you click the AIS object, the AIS Filter form will open and the range ring display will toggle. To keep the current ring display state, close the form with the Close or the [X] button. The program will display a minimum range ring of 16 pixel radius when the plot scale would cause the ring to draw smaller.
• Removed the redundant Proximity test. Instead, use the GPS Simulator with ENC or MCG charts.
• Revised the display of the GPS range ring. If you click your vessel's icon, the Vessel Settings form will open and the ring display will toggle. To keep the current ring display state, close the form with the Close or the [X] button. The program will display a minimum range ring of 16 pixel radius when the plot scale would cause the ring to draw smaller.
• Fixed the magnetic variation display on the plot Navigation bar.
• Fixed the waypoint TTG on the plot Navigation bar.
• Removed File menu from the GPS simulator.
• Revised and simplified the GPS simulation methods.

Version 3,1,4

• Created and added GPS, AIS, and GPS-AIS simulation overview videos to YouTube. You can access the videos on the download page or here.
• Fixed some errors in the GPS simulator.
• The San Francisco AIS feed has moved to Exploratorium.edu. To use the socket input, Use: URL ais.exploratorium.edu, Port 80, IP 207.7.139.10. For more information, see the Help AIS Simulator form topic.
• Fixed some errors in the Follow Vessel -> Progress command.
• Fixed some errors in the AIS real and simulator input.

Version 3,1,3

This version contains several minor clean-up corrections and changes not noted below.

• Revised the World coastline data loading and unloading. To view the World coastline, you must enable two commands. For more information, refer to the "World coastline" Help topics.
• Because the Named Locations files can be very large and require several minutes to load, the program no longer opens the files when the program starts. If you want to use the Named Locations, you need to select the Display menu Named locations command to open the options form.
• Changed the Xtools menu User settings -> Make backup copy command so the program will restart after saving the changes.
• Fixed the NCI tile selection so only the tiles of charts marked as visible are selected when creating or replacing tiles.
• Fixed the NCI tile delete method's failure to finish. It would get hung-up in an empty folder cleanup process.
• Fixed an RNC false spans 180 error that occurred when the chart was opened.
• Fixed a false indicator state for the AIS and GPS menus. The background color would sometimes be red even though the devices were disabled. There are four color states:
  • Gray - disabled
  • Yellow - enabled but the port is not opened
  • Red - enabled but could not open the selected port
  • Green - receiving

  After running a simulation, optionally, you will need to manually re-enable the related AIS or GPS input port.

• Fixed a indexing error that prevented opening of RNCs.
• Fixed a master bitmap reset problem with the zoom [Zo] and [Zc] plot button commands.
• Fixed a GoogleMaps tile downloader error that caused the GoogleMaps tile server to see the MarinePlotter download as malicious robotic activity. GoogleMaps would then deny service for 24-hours.
• Added error messages to the error log for tile download conditions: 403 Forbidden (access denied), 404 Not found, 503 Service unavailable.
  • The program will log 403 errors, when you have downloaded more than 25000 tiles during a 24-hour period or the program demonstrates malicious robotic behavior. For example: A malicious download occurs when you repeatedly try to download non-existent tiles.
  • The program will log 404 errors when one or more tiles do not exist for download.
  • The program will log 503 errors when the site is down for maintenance or cannot service the download request.
• Added to the File menu of the Named Locations form the command Import Country Named Locations and added a method for the program to draw each country's name.

Version 3,1,2

• Updated the Named Locations for California to Panama here.
• The MarinePlotter program Help documention is now available online here.
• Revised the Named Locations form to use data from National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. For more information, refer to About Geo-Names and Named Locations in the program Help (Search tab.)
• Add the MarinePlotter Help documentation to the MarinePlotter web-page for online browsing. You can now examine the program documentation before downloading the program.
• Scanned (with LinkChecker9.2) and fixed about 40 broken links in the Help html-files.
• Added the Flat checkbox to the CM93 to MCG form. If checked, the MCG files for a level are in a related folder for the level Z, A, B, C, D, E, F, or G. If unchecked, the MCG files are in the one folder with the same folder format as the CM93 cells.
• Changed "Image not found" message to "Basic tile not found".
• Changed "RNC image not found" message to "NCI tile not found".
• Fix the plot modal control buttons problem. When the mouse left-button was clicked on a plot modal button such as the Hand or the [ZR] button, the button would sometimes turn-on and then immediately turn-off or vise versa. The clicked button is now locked until command completion.
• Fix the F1 (Help) key command for the Named Locations form.
• Fix the undefined object error in ClassErrors.ErrorMsg at formErrors.Insert(...)

Version 3,1,1

• Fixed the error message that occurred after installing an application update and during the restoration of the user's prior settings.
• Added a simple Splash Screen for the application startup. The splash screen will appear during program loading and before the MarinePlotter main window appears. The spash screen should display for less less than about 10-seconds. The splash screen display duration will depend on the computer speed and activity load.
• Fixed the MCG cell un-select error in the CM93 to MCG conversion form. Selected cells were un-selected when the viewing scale changed.

Version 3,1,0

The MarinePlotter is no longer supported on Windows XP.

The term Raster Nautical Chart (RNC) Tile is changed herein to Nautical Chart Image (NCI) Tiles because the NCI tiles do not use the RNC file format typically found in Maptech KAP-files. The NCI tiles are simply bitmap images all of the same size and with only one day-time color scheme. This change will not change the way the program works, but the change will require that you rename the NCI tile folder to NCI tile folder to prevent confusion in the future. I plan to create real NCI tiles as kap-files that will have Day, Dusk, and Night color schemes. This work will eventually progress to Vector Nautical Chart (VNC) Tiles.

Note: If already you have an RncTiles, RNC tiles, or similar RNC Tile folder. Please rename it to an equivalent Nautical Chart Image (NCI) folder such as NciTiles.

• Fix a zoom-out error that disposed of the master bitmap. The error caused the [R] redraw to fail after a [Zi] and [Zo] plot button click sequence.
• Added the drawing view Shift menu Down, Up, Left, Right commands to the plot window context popup menu.
• Fixed the U.S. ENC and RNC chart zip-file update method.
• Fixed an ENC 'FUNCTN' not processed drawing error message. The error was not in the plotted ENC.
• Fixed MCG area objects [CRANES], [DYKCON], [GATCON], and [LOKBSN] drawn as orange line error.
• Re-built the World NCI tiles at here.
• Renamed the public RNC Tiles folder (noted above) to NCI Tiles.

Version 3,0,0

• The MarinePlotter is now developed, built, and packaged using Microsoft's Visual Studio 2013 program on a 64-bit machine. Prior MarinePlotter versions used Visual Studio 2010 on a 32-bit machine.
• Revised the program installation to AnyCPU so the program can run as a 64-bit Windows program on a 64-bit machine or as a 32-bit Windows program on a 32-bit machine.
• Moved the installed MarinePlotter Application Data folder from ../Program Files/Common Files to ../ProgramData/DJM Questor Software/MarinePlotter/ because the data is common to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• Removed the World Magnetic Model code from the MarinePlotter and made it a separate Win32 process so it will run on 64-bit machines. If you need the Magnetic Variation, the MarinePlotter will obtain the information from the new MarinePlotterWMM process.
• Applied a bunch of Microsoft Code Analysis recommended code changes to improve performance and security.
• Fixed several application startup problems that occurred following a first time install due to System Registry write failures.
• Fixed a small memory leak when drawing MCG files. The memory leak would eventually cause an "out of memory" error when creating thousands of RNC tiles form several open MCG files.
• Fixed a RNC tile creation error that caused the program to fail to create RNC tiles for some tile locations.
• Improved the RNC tile creation speed from multiple open MCGs.
• Revised the tile loading mechanism to retain the tile data until no longer needed. This change results in faster tile redraws: Specifically, during a "follow vessel centered" operation, the change improves incrementally moving the image past your vessel icon when the vessel icon is centered in the plot window.
• Fixed the broken tile download commands Replace, Update, and Delete. The addition of the RNC tile commands caused the program to skip some basic tile command code.
• Removed the Append and Extract commands from the Named Locations form.
• Fixed errors in the Object Display Filter form and in the related area, line, and point symbol table files.

Update/Release history version-2.