Latest Contributions by JimBarry

You just have to use MapScale. I can't believe this post got 8 views and nobody responded.  Seems like this is going to be one long learning curve. I'm pretty sure you're using the ArcGIS MapControl and not the MapObjects one.  If so, then I think those 8 drive-by views are because you're in the wrong forum.   The people making those views didn't know how to answer you. I'm going to move this to the ArcObjects forum.  You'll get better replies on these kinds of posts over there. ... View more

Good points Kevin.  Either way, we have to make it easy and useful for both askers and answerers.  It's sort of a chicken-egg problem, so we need them both. If it's not easy to ask, then there's a lot less to answer. But if it's not easy to answer, then there's little point to asking. ... View more

I write as a systems administrator partnered with a software developer.   We are considering a task that would require that the developed mobile app be able to 'interface' with ARC GIS.  ARC GIS is not known to my developer and so have opted to inquire if there is any knowledgebase for this topic.  We are following up with the intended enduser.  Much thanks for any guidance as I await a reply. One way for a mobile app you're developing to interface with ArcGIS is by using the REST API to use map services and other geo services like geoprocessing, geometry, etc. I realize your post is from April and perhaps no longer timely, but I'm going to move this to the REST API forum, or if you want, you can repost something new either there or in the ArcGIS Mobile or ArcGIS for iOS forums, depending on the technology you're using. Or feel free to contact me directly by my twitter link below, we can discuss, and I can get you connected with the right people here at Esri who can help. ... View more

Thanks everyone for all of the opinions so far.   Keep them coming and get your friends to weigh in. Once discussion on this thread starts to slow down considerably, we'll make a decision based on what you collectively want. ... View more

Yes, I think we should keep the I would keep the gp-MB-py grouping together grouping, but please no ArcObjects, unless its using comtypes with arcpy. Understood.   There is already an all-ArcObjects forum, and it would seem logical that it should remain as such until the data shows otherwise. ... View more

I'm not voting one way or another, mainly because I see the benefits of both methods. I just want to say that I see a good number of "workflow" posts...."how do I start this" or "how would I go about achieving goal X". Very quickly someone will offer a "do it in ModelBuilder" or "you need to script that". It would be hard for the original poster to put that question in the appropriate forum from the start. Or once they got an answer its now in a general forum instead of the scripting form. (And I don't say that with the thought of moving the original post...theres a lot of overhead on that). The tagging idea (while I don't know if the forum technology supports it) would be a cool idea. The tags could give everyone the best of all worlds. One area for your GP questions, but if it ends up being a Python specific question, add the tag and everyone who loves Python can quickly find that post. On the one hand, these forums do support adding tags to threads.  Scroll to the bottom of each to see where they can be added.    As a practical matter, this would only be a strong solution if there were well-known and agreed upon (then learned and remembered) tag standards, applied to all appropriate threads all the time.  How well or poorly this is done will determine how large the cracks are where threads fall.   That's why I'm thinking the most practical solution are either to keep the GP thread together as one, or to split them into two or three discrete and logical groups.   That way it's more plain to everyone which discussions go where, and no one has to remember if, when, or how to tag anything. If we split them, I would recommend that we don't put the word "..General" into any of their names.  What we saw with the old forums is that the "..General" forum ends up being the sock drawer.   There might be an MB forum and a PY forum, but they'll be an illusion as we all find that lots of MB and PY conversations (and General GP questions that straddle MB and PY) end up there too. ... View more

Is this Geoprocessing discussion forum too broad, too big, too general? Should we consider splitting it up into smaller topics? Perhaps: a.  Geoprocessing - General b.  Modelbuilder c.  Python d. ... Or what do you suggest?   Or should GP discussions be all in one single forum like it is today? What do you think? ... View more

Thanks for your suggestion.   We're all in favor of making improvements that make sense overall.  Community tools need to continually evolve to fit the communities they serve. Interesting stats.  But our objective should be to help keep folks with similar interests together, not splitting a group because one forum is a lot more active than another.  I mean, we wouldn't combine Geocoding, Cartography, CAD, Enterprise GIS, and Raster Data into one forum just because they get a lot less threads than GP does. We think you're right that over-generalization needs to be watched out for.  But of equal concern is over-fragmentation.  That's the problem we had with the old forums.   There were too many forums to learn, too many straddle threads, and too many posts to each forum's "...General" bucket because they were more active and it was easier than being forced to learn our organization.    But as you pointed out, of utmost concern to us are our contributors.  Without them the forums have no value, and it needs to be easier for them to participate.   If we're out of balance here, then we need to balance it. So, if we're going to change something, what does that change break?   Are there more users who are only interested in Modelbuilder, and more users only interested in Python, and more users only interested in GP in general?   Or are there more users "doing GP" who are interested in all three?   The answer to that will tell us exactly what to do. ... View more

Ah, an interesting discussion I started. I have to admit that I sometimes would rank the question as a 5 even though I knew it wasn't, just so I could get a faster response. If it truely worked and someone answered faster than they would have, I'll never know. But I did think that way...Are you bringing back the MVP point system thing? I also have to admit that I never really learned what it was good for. I mean I saw the people's names highlighted that they answered a lot of questions but was that it? Or did they get something for it? Well, they definitely had my thanks. I had never thought about an auto search or a FAQ page, like Bill just mentioned. That would be awesome! Man, if ESRI could do that for these forums...well, I would be impressed. There were some prizes in the old MVP program that ranged from Conference Registration and plaques to software licenses.  Details here. The new program (that we're still developing, then testing before it's fielded) will include credit for more content than just forum answers.  And we want all logged in users to be able to vote on valuable replies, not just the original poster. Until then you may notice that some users currently on the forums have a "Forums MVP" badge under their name.  This recognizes those who had at least once placed in the Top 10 annually.  These folks are peer-recognized as valuable contributors.   They put in a lot of free time and effort out here, and we all appreciate their efforts. ... View more

I liked that too but after a few years realized that easy or hard were in the eyes of the beholder.  By the end (of the old forums) the rational thing was for people with questions to mark them all as hard because that offered a better incentive for people to answer them.  I also noticed that FAQs and newbie questions tended to be marked hard while questions from veterans were often marked as easy, perhaps because experienced people have a sense that most questions are easy to someone.  People who were posing programming related questions almost always marked them as hard, no matter what. Thus, the marking of the questions had little or nothing to do with their intrinsic interest or difficulty.  I doubt that would ever change in the future. You could have people vote on whether threads are interesting or useful.  Ah... you already do that!  Maybe ESRI could consider expanding this function to show the distribution of votes rather than just giving an average value.  Perhaps that would satisfy Andrea. Very good points, clearly.   Thanks Bill. Yeah, these things like ratings, degree of difficulty, voting, marking as answered -- none of these things are air-tight and do contain at least some subjectivity, given the perspective and mood of the poster and the responder.   But for the most part they are probably more valuable to many users than having none of them. ... View more

I've no idea if this would be feasable or not, but recently I've experienced several times that someone posts a question in the German Forum and the exact same question - in English, obviously - in one of the English fori. I think it would be helpful to have a link between these two, so anyone considering posting on one thread can quickly check if there is such a "sister thread" and if maybe the question has already been answered. At least the poster should have the ability to mark a question as answered or no longer relevant (even if there was no answer to it). Every thread has a unique and somewhat human readable and RESTful-style URL.  Nothing stopping the original poster or anyone replying to include links into both of the threads to cross-reference them to the other. Not sure that's a task we can always count on a moderator to do, due to the obvious language skill needed. Great idea though, of course. ... View more

Hi all, So, I miss being able to quickly see which questions have been answered and which posting the answer is in. Can we do that again somehow? please? I also liked seeing which questions were easy, medium or hard. How about that? Thanks, We don't have that yet, but we're working on it, almost there, and we agree with you that we need it up and working asap. ... View more

Moving to the Geoprocessing Forum.  - Jim ... View more

That is my post about programming for old ArcView 3.x - [translated by Google to English]: Programming ArcView 3.x from .NET(C#) via sending Avenue commands to it through the DDE That is not about embedding maps to your app, but might be helpful. See also other posts on my blog about GIS programming in .NET - there are might be some helpful links for you. I'm going to leave this thread here, but also drop a copy of it onto the ArcObjects forum.   Really does seem to me that "wlywly" isn't referring to ArcView 3.x, but that "dimaka" is. ... View more

Hey all, Remember when you had a list of your forums and the forums you were watching? And bookmarked forums? Where is that now? Can we get that back? When you're looking at a forum list, you can use "Forum Tools > Subscribe to this Forum" to be notified about all new threads. When you're looking at a thread, you can use "Thread Tools > Subscribe to this Thread" to be notified about all new replies on that particular thread. You can watch and manage your subscriptions through the "Forum Actions > User Control Panel".  You can add, remove, organize into folders, customize your settings, etc.  You can also receive email notifications instantly or in daily or weekly digests.  However it's worth noting that while many do receive these emails from us, some users still do not and we haven't yet figured out why.   But at a minimum, you can use the User Control Panel. ... View more