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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: GISList: ArcView vs MapInfo vs Manifold |
| Date: |
08/21/2002 06:37:26 PM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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> Does any one knows about an study, report, whitepaper, etc that compares
> functionality, cost/benefit, friendliness and WebGis capabilities of above
> mentioned software? I know any of them has its weakness and
I don't know of a three-way comparison, but I agree that would be very
helpful for the GIS community. There are some informal comments, such as
the famous posting to Manifold-L comparing Manifold to ArcView, ArcInfo 8.1
and AutoDesk Map at
http://www.manifold.net/news/posting1.html
Manifold would be happy to provide a free copy to any journalist writing a
review/comparison for a legitimate ezine or other journal. I have to say,
though, that there are practical and business obstacles to arranging a
review.
One practical obstacle is that seriously reviewing a product of the scale of
Manifold (1.4 million lines of code, with 2600 pages in the User Manual)
takes a lot of full-time work. Assuming you don't want a review that
simply regurgitates our marketing propaganda you need a fairly experienced
character to report on all the many features. It's not easy finding someone
who is expert in vector work, knows enough about remote sensing and
sophisticated image operations, has a lot of experience in databases, can
write sensibly about scripting using sophisticated debugging tools, and so
on. Reviewing Manifold is like reviewing ArcInfo 8.x, Spatial Analyst,
ArcIMS, ArcSDE, SQL Server, Visual Studio and PhotoShop or ERDAS all rolled
into one. That's a very expensive project for the relatively small
journalistic organizations that report on GIS.
A business obstacle is that no GIS ezine or journal is financially strong
enough to criticize its advertisers. Manifold to date has not advertised,
preferring to put all funds into development and customer service and
depending upon word of mouth references for expansion. While we are very
grateful for the occasional coverage we receive from various ezines, we
understand that a major review of Manifold is just not going to happen so
long as we don't advertise. Simply put, there is no way an ezine can afford
to publish a three way review that states the product of a non-advertiser
works a lot better, is easier to use, does a lot more and costs a fraction
of products offered by those advertisers who keep the ezine in business. We
don't expect our friends in journalism to commit financial suicide.
One way around this might be for an academic or other public institution to
sponsor such a review, preferably in a context where one of the three is not
already in heavy use by the institution. Manifold would donate free
licenses to support such a review. Another possibility is for Manifold to
do some advertising. After all, if we and others don't help support
independent GIS publications, we don't give them the freedom they would like
from the limits of a small advertising base.
Manifold (of course) does have some comparisons in the works. These are
between Manifold and ESRI's ArcInfo 8.x family and Manifold and MapInfo. It
will be as balanced as we can make it, but then again a vendor-supplied
analysis is never the same as a good third party analysis.
Cheers,
Dimitri
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