Well, it has been a while since the last release. There were several radical new features, and some changes to the render architecture that needed to be thoroughly tested before being released.  The most important new feature is printing support.  I recently tested it by printing an E size sheet on our HP plotter.  It is also great for printing to PDF if you have a PDF printer driver.  Unlike some of the print plugins, the new  print option prints either what you see in the layer view panel or what is in the fence.  It includes optios for optimizing for vector or raster output.

Download SkyJUMP release 89  here 

It has been a month since the last SkyJUMP release and the feature list is overflowing with new goodies.  My personal favorite is the new Zoom Realtime tool, but there are several bug fixes, user interface enhancements, and the usual general speed improvements.  Download it here .

Changed the Memory Display status to read "RAM"  and fixed it so that it now uses the percent of memory that is available to the program.  It goes yellow when available memory drops below 15%, and red when it is below 5%.  When in the yellow zone, you probably shouldn't load any more datasets, and if you are working in the red zone, you might want to consider cutting down on the number of working layers in your task.

Modified the Save Dataset As dialog so that it automatically appends the usual file extension when it is not entered by the user.

Added an Open Recent Task submenu to the File menu that will remember the last 8 tasks opened.

Added lots of icons to the layer name popup menu, the layer view popup menu, and the Edit menu.

Fixed the layer name panel so that right clicking does not highlight the dragged name with a move bar.

Added a File menu Convert Task Units option.   This option will modify the geometry of the entire task.  It requires that all layers be loaded (i.e. not deferred load status).  It sets the Task Units after it is finished.

Modified the rendering of polygons so that they are accurate to the subpixel level.  This will hopefully improve the quality of future printing  options.


SkyJUMP 85 released internally 5/01/07.

Added a Zoom Realtime tool to the toolbar.  This tool uses image stretching to simulate the zoom before it occurs for an accurate preview. Left click and drag down to zoom in, or up to zoom  out. Moving side to side will position the image.   Alternatively, right click and drag to the right  to zoom in, or left to zoom out while moving up  and down to drag the image.  Precise zooming is possible using a combination of these methods.

The bundled JRE has been updated to 1.6.0_01.  This has improved the general rendering speed and task loading by 20 to 30 %. Memory management (garbage collection) also seems to have improved. If you want to use another JRE, set the path to it in the ../Jump/bin/SkyJUMP.ini file.

Linestrings now render much faster than before due to the decimation optimization.  Previously only polygons benefited.

Added a Layer tree panel right-click menu option "Move Selected Layers...".   The option displays a dialog that allows you to select or create a category to which the selected layers are then moved.  This option allows rapid reorganization of large layer lists.  There are radio buttons "Move to top" and "Move to bottom" that control the destination location in the category.

Fixed the problem with the toolbar selection arrow tool losing the feature selection when right clicking.

Fixed a timing dependent Null pointer exception that occurred occasionally when opening a task file while SkyJUMP is starting up.

Fixed a problem with the Audit Geometry tool with multiple layers where it sometimes showed red indicating a duplicate, but only selected  one feature.

Fixed problem with the feedback on the Color Theming style panel.  Setting a fill pattern would cause all of the other color theme cells to pick up the same fill pattern.

The File Save All option will now only save layers that are designated Read Only, like ArcSDE layers, to disk when they have been modified. The right-click on Layer Tree menu option called Save Selected Datasets will now prompt to save Read Only selected layers to disk files, modified or not. Previously it would ask, but then fail to save them because of a later check.


SkyJUMP 84 released internally 4/18/07.

Added a label style option that allows labels to be hidden at a specified scale.  This makes it possible to stop text from rendering when zoomed out too far to actually read,  but still display the geometry.

Added some additional error checking when the Save Selected Datasets or Save All feature saves layers that have not previously been saved.  It now converts illegal characters in filenames to "_" and prevents saving multiple layers to the same file.

Modified Open Task so that even if layers are not visible, it will still check to see if their path is valid, and prompt to fix if not.

Fixed some problems with getting "Array index out of range: 0" when doing rapid zooming using the mouse wheel.

Modified the zoom bar so that it supports English units when the Task Units are set. Also disabled the drag bar to prevent it from acting as a control.  It is now just a zoom level indicator.

Modified the scale bar to support English units.

Fixed the layer name tree dragging so that it allows more direct control of moving layers to any location on the tree.