Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Shareware: Christine GIS System 2.01

Christine GIS System 2.01 was just released.

When students have light-weight GIS work (joining Census tables to shapefiles, for example) they need to complete for non-academic purposes, I almost always recommend the freely available (freeware) GIS Christine Viewer. Our educational license for ESRI software prohibit non-academic use of ArcGIS.

I have been hesitant, however, to point out the shareware version, called Christine GIS System, as the capabilities did not seem worth the money. Late March, they released version 2.01 which really impresses me. It can create buffers, work with cad files, connect to WMS files, and is very scriptable.

The one feature that I would really like to see is geocoding support. However, with resources out there such as Batch Geocode, this is manageable. Should the shareware version of Christine offer geocoding support, this would become one heck of cheap, small, GIS app.

2 comments:

Carlos said...

Have you tried looking at Manifold? It's not free but word is that it's good band for the buck ($250 CDN).

mapz said...

No, I have never tried Manifold. Numerous folks have recommended Manifold to me and I have never made the time to get a demo and give it a shot.

Thanks for this comment as it's providing the kick I need. Since your comment earlier this afternoon, I drafted a request to purchase a license for me to test and evaluate.

I'll blog my opinion as soon as I can get one...