[OSRS-PROJ] commercial apps

[Hawkswan at aol.com]

Mark:
 
We have been using the original version of Proj.4 in our products for several 
years in our C/Unix-based software products.  A couple of years ago, we used 
the MKS Nutcracker software development environment to port our products to 
PC platforms.  Today, we are completing full conversion and testing of our 
products into native MS/C++/MFC versions for PC's.
 
>From the beginning, Proj.4 worked as advertised, and we had very few problems 
with the library.  Programmer interface documentation was not real good, but 
enough to get Proj.4 working in our products. Gerald Evenden personally 
provided good support when needed, along with lots of great nostalgia.  Our 
prior experience was with GCTP, and we knew we didn't want to use that in our 
products.
 
With MKS, the original C/Unix source codes were compiled pretty much as is, 
including the Proj.4 library.  We mostly had problems setting up the X-Server 
part of NutCracker, but once those were solved, everything worked fine.  If 
you are a Unix person, MKS provides all major Unix functionality on a PC, 
concurrent with MS Windows, which is nice.

We've had no formal training in using Visual C++/MFC, but got most of our new 
software working recently, except for integrating Proj.4.  We first tried to 
build the old library and integrate that into our products, but ran into a 
lot of problems that, with our lack of VCC experience, we couldn't easily 
solve.

After a little research, we realized there were newer versions of Proj.4 
available, including a makefile for VC++.  Here, we had two problems: The 
first was something about incompatible libraries, causing linking to fail.  
The second was that the programmer interface to Proj.4 had changed.

With tons of source code calls to Proj.4, a tight schedule, and what seemed 
to be an absence of documentation on the new programmer interfaces, we 
decided to tweak the makefile.vc and use that to compile the old library 
under VC++.  Surpassingly, it worked, and linked up OK.  All our old Proj.4 
calls are functioning correctly.  We still have one little problem with 
competing C and VC++ libraries being incompatible in our release version, but 
we'll get that worked out.

Our software products primarily support production mosaicking, 
transformation, quality assurance and keyword header editing of USGS DOQQs, 
and are used by the USGS, their contractors and DOQQ users for quality 
assurance and mosaicking of those products.  Besides marketing our software 
products, we use our mosaicking and transformation software in support of our 
in-house production contracts in support of the USGS IP program.

Once we get all our products going with the old Proj.4 we intend to get 
smarter with both MS/VC++/MFC and the latest Proj.4 releases, upgrade our 
existing products to the latest Proj.4 version, and get on with seriously 
delayed new product development and production backlog.

Bottom line is that the old Proj.4 stuff has worked just fine for us in 
covering all UTM and SPCS projections over the Continental US.  Proj.4 has a 
lot of usage history, reliability and credibility that a do-it-yourself 
package would take a long time to acqire and prove.  You also now have this 
user support group.

Sorry this is so long.

Jere Swanson
Hawk Imaging Technology
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