Vector drawing utility for MAPPER-3a town plan tie-in. v1.6.
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(Files produced work with MAPPER-3a v2.9 and above and MAPPER-3a/Ireland
 v1.2 and above)

Please upload any and all town plans to the CIX 'mapper/townplans'
conference/topic or e-mail them UUENCODEd to slitchfield@cix.compulink.co.uk

Changes in VECTDRAW for v1.6 (over 1.5):
Now accepts town databases from the GB or Ireland programs; now looks in
custom town databases as well;

I can't offer any cash incentives for drawing and uploading *one or two*
of your local towns in this way, but if you do more than ten, I'll think
about it! Anyway, it's fun! 8-)) And think of the sheer usefulness if we can
build up a library of 200 or 300 or more local town plans, all callable and
displayable from MAPPER-3a!

Installation
------------
Then put VECTDRAW.OPO in a \OPO\ directory and run from there .....

It needs two files from MAPPER-3a v2.9 (or MAPPER-3a/Ireland) to run
properly, I guess most people will have MAPPER-3a (or MAPPER-3a/Ireland)
installed by the time they get to this stage, so there's no problem, but
if you really do need to be picky, the GB.MP1 and MAPPER.PIC (or
IRELAND.MP1 and MAPPERIR.PIC) files need to be in a \APP\MAPPER3A\
(or \APP\MAPPERIR\) directory somewhere on one of the Psion's drives.

Notes
-----
Operation should be obvious. Note that the naming convention for the town
plan files is derived from the eastings/northings components of the town's
position in the MAPPER-3a environment, with leading zeros if necessary) so
as to keep the file name unique while conforming to the DOS 8.3 file name
length convention.

Note that if you want to do plans of overlay items (e.g.Gatwick Airfield),
then there is a way, see appendix A for details.

Note that VECTDRAW will only work with files in \APP\MAPPER3A\PLANS\ (or
\APP\MAPPERIR\PLANS\ if you're using MAPPER-3a/Ireland) on your 'default'
(i.e. RAM/writeable) drive.

John Boyce's JBDATA utility makes a good tool for changing data once
entered. If you have problems running JBDATA make sure a) you have enough
memory free and b) you have the latest version. Please also remember to
compress the file and delete the setup record before exiting.

Copyright UK 1995 Steve Litchfield


Appendix A
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Method for doing plans for overlay items (i.e. not towns)
---------------------------------------------------------
(I've assumed you're using the GB product, but the principle is the same
for the Irish one as well ....)

a) Pick some place obscure in the GB.MP1 database, as our example, we'll
use John O'Groats.
b) Boot up VECTDRAW 1.6 and say you want to draw a plan of John O'Groats
c) Draw the plan of your chosen place/item. For example, you might be
doing a plan of Gatwick Airport. Do the plan with runways, terminals,
roads, parking etc and then exit the program. VECTDRAW will tell you the
file name it used for the plan, e.g. TP338973.MT1, which represents the
coordinates of John O'Groats, which is what you asked for.
d) Find out the eastings and northings coordinates of your item, e.g.
Gatwick Airport (in the Airfields overlay) is 526 by 139. (Note that as an
example, I've already done Gatwick Airport for you, included in the
MAPPER-3a v2.9 ZIP set)
e) In the \APP\MAPPER3A\PLANS\ directory on your default drive, rename
TP338973.MT1 to TP526139.MT1 .
f) That's it! When you now select Gatwick Airport (using Psion-Y etc), you
can press the hot-key Psion-ENTER and get the airport's layout!

(If all that sounds too confusing for you, then apologies. I will try and
make things easier in a future release)