MapInfo Pro

I have already posted this in the V17 Beta group, however this question is now more suited here.. "Is there any support or direction we can take on seeing if old 32bit MI mbx tools can be recompiled etc for use within 64bit? We have a handful of very productive favorites that we would like to bring back to life!"

First couple of mbx's that I use frequently are called (see attached);

• PolyBuilder
• ListStructure

Regards,

Tony Jordan

Attachment(s)

MIProPolyBuilder.zip   384 KB 1 version

LISTSTRU Application

Thanks for sharing this, @Tony Jordan? 

I took a look at the LISTSTRU application. It seems to work. It gets loaded into the LEGACY tab which might be what you want.

The very quick fix is to make it have the Show Structure menu item on the tool itself in the Tools window.

This can be done by removing a few lines from the existing code and adding a few new lines and then recompiling the source code. Here you can see the changes I have made to the file:

I have attached the modified source code and the newly compiled application.

There is a few other things worth considering:

• The working directory: It can be problematic to write to the folder where the fool is located. So it could be a good idea to change that folder to the Windows Temp folder instead.
• Maybe you want the tool to be added to the TABLE tab. That can also be done but require a bit more work right now. Hopefully we can make that even easier with one of the next couple of patches for v17
• The tool should use the new functions/procedures for getting better implemented into the Tools window. These could show an icon for the tool, a description and version and the Aboutbox

I'll try to find time to improve it even further during the next couple of weeks

Attachment(s)

LISTSTRU Ribbon.zip   5 KB 1 version

Many thanks for taking a look at these Peter..

OK, so as you mentioned, the ListStructure tool doesn't like to write back to the default tool location in ProgramFiles becasue of the permissions issue, so I have located the ListStructure tool to our Tools library on the network and all is working just fine, so I shall leave it like that as we don't want to change permissions to write to ProgramFiles folders, as that is not a good practice.

We are happy to open the ListStructure Tool from the Tools List, however if you are going to tweak the code some more I think it would be nice to be able to run it from within the "Legacy" menu...

Regards,

Tony Jordan

I forgot to add, many Tools are only able to be Open/Run by right clicking on them from within the Tools List.. Is this normal?

Tony

Hi Tony,

Yes, that's the way we implemented the porting to the ribbon interface. Typically, a MapBasic used to embed itself in the Tools menu in the classic menubased interface. That menu no longer exists so we decided to place their menu items on the tool itself in the Tools window.

Sure, I can let the tool have a button on the LEGACY tab. Wouldn't you prefer that to be a single button instead of a dropdown?

Hi Peter,

Single button for this Tool would be fine, it only has the one function..

Tony

Hi

I have taken another look at the tool and changed a few things:

• The tool will now also get loaded as a single button on the LEGACY tab
• I have added some additional subs/functions that lets the tool get better integrated into the Tools window to show a description, icon, application name and version and be able to show the Aboutbox via the Tools window
• The files are now written to the Temp folder to avoid permission issues when writing to the application folder
• Added support for the new column types, LargeInt, Time and DateTime

When we release the 17.0.1 patch we can consider adding the tool to an existing group on the TABLE tab using the updated Create/Alter Buttonpad statement.

Attachment(s)

LISTSTRU Ribbon.zip   5 KB 1 version

Oh, and by the way, the PolyBuilder tool is a tool we really should consider bring across to 64 bit too. I haven't see the status of this one specifically but I know we are planning on bringing out a lot of the other 32 bit tools with the 17.0.1 patch coming around August.

Let me check the status of the PolyBuilder tool too.

Thanks Peter...

The PolyBuilder tool is definitely a valued tool so we appreciate your efforts on this too. We use it to build allotment/parcel boundary polygons from translated CAD files, as most often the CAD files are drawn using polylines representing these allotment/parcel polygons... terrible practice!

Regards,

Tony Jordan

Hi Tony,

If the polylines are snapped, you can use the Enclose feature of MapInfo Pro to create polygons where an area is completely "enclosed" by polylines.

This is a way more basic process and it doesn't have all the feature of the PolyBuilder tool but maybe it might just work in your case?

Yes we do use the Objects>Enclose for basic work, its just that the o'l PolyBuilder tool rips through a mass of data even if its not clean to create a nice polygon dataset, sometimes there is minor cleanup required, but a great tool saving lots of time.. Thanks again!

I was just looking at this LISTSRU tool and it needs some serious updating to bring it into the 21st century from when it was created in 1994.

TAB files now have additional column types (e.g.: DateTime, Time, LargeInt). Probably would want to know the type of table it is (Native\NativeX\GPKG, Excel, etc), how many columns, are they indexed or not, charset of table, Coordsys, etc.

There have been a number of TableInfo() function additions added that would be very useful in this tool if you wanted more complete output of its structure.

Hi Bill,

Yep, its an old tool.. As seen above posted on 27th June, Peter re-posted some changes to the tool, it does recognize the new field types (DateTime, Time, LargeInt), however doesn't display indexing status or Coordsys type as you mentioned. Those last two items would be handy, but I dont know how much work is involved in getting the tool to read this info.. At this stage I am pretty happy with what Peter has done to the tool just to get it where it is..