On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:22:14 +0000, Roger Long wrote:

A friend and professional mariner passed this on to me. Maybe it's old news
here, I haven't been following the issue. But, just in case anyone hasn't
heard:

MapTech's agreement with NOAA for raster charts has expired and NOAA has now
made its raster charts available for free online.

Apparently Maptech still owns the BSB file format. I'm not sure how this
affects things in a practical sense, such as the gov't still having to pay
license fees, or other software developers being able to compete freely.

This means that you can get entire raster chart collections for free
from NOAA. There 1,016 BSB format charts online at NOAA's website, but
the maximum that can be downloaded at one time is 100. So if you're
intent on suddenly accumulating a complete chart library of the U.S., it
may take you some time and effort. But if you're only looking for a few
specific areas, or for updating your existing library, this is the easy
way to do it.

Easy, my ass! This website is a disaster. Offhand I can think of several
ways they could have done this much easier, making charts a lot easier and
faster to find and download, with a lot less load on their servers. NOAA
needs better web developers.

I do appreciate their making this available though!

Matt O.