>
>
>I am considering adding a axial line drawing feature to the PC Depthmap
>program (which would then process the axial lines in exactly the same
>way as a visibility graph).  

Well If I may offer some defence of Axman - it does more than just 
draw lines and then process them. One important feature was the ablity to
unlink linkes - Cario for example has many flyovers which would be 
hard to model with a normal axial analyis program.

There are also some anylitic features - the ablity to select a line in a
scattergram of conectivity/intergration and then have that item appear 
selected in the map view. Which I have been told from the original users
was absolutely vital to the process of investigating what an axial map 
ment.

>Unfortunately, I'm primarily a researcher, and I don't have much time to
>input on previously investigated areas of Space Syntax.  If there is
>sufficient demand from everyone, I may get round to it!

I have writen and sold exlusivly to space syntax ltd a program called 
Ovation. This was specifically designed to process GIS based data. It 
also ran on a Mac, how ever one of the possiblities discussed was the 
offering of a processing by email service. Ie you email the map and it 
get's emailed back to you processed ready to re-read into the GIS. If this
helps you might want to contact Space Syntax ltd. 

How ever this would really depend upon how good you are with a GIS 
program.

One of the early users of ovation had a limited understanding of the GIS 
programs,
complained that Ovation was not working. Due he said  a large number of 
the axial lines 
near the edge of the city where not connected. After 
investigation it turned out that the city was so large that the curveture 
of
the earth was more than negligable effect. When the map had been exported 
to 
Ovation ( which like axman assumes everything is on a flat-plane ) the
map then had distortions near the edge ( imagine takeing the top off an 
eggshell off then flatenning it the edges crack). Not being closely 
familar with 
a GIS program, the user had gone for a simple export of coordinates and 
had 
hoped for the best. I was pretty amazed by the idear of the shape of the 
earth
comeing into the whole thing. A GIS pro could have anticipated and solved 
the 
problem with ease. So the moral of the story is GIS and ovation is ok if 
you
are clearly very comfortable with a GIS system and the idears embodied in 
it. 

hmmm thinking about it, possibly the other story is that someone should 
email me
the formuli for line intersection testing on a sphere. 

hope this helps

sheep

   


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