LOOK AND FEEL

Marine ENC utilizes a standard interface based on menus and icon toolbars. You can easily pan over charts with the mouse and zoom with the scroll wheel. Functions can be accessed through a main menu or through toolbars that place the cursor into a "mode" to perform certain functions, such as creating a waypoint or measuring distance and bearing. We would have liked more right-click contextual menus, but the right-click button was usually designated for a zoom-out feature.

In addition to the main menu across the top, a Status Bar shows information such as GPS location, cursor location and chart datum. Two toolbars include icons for functions such as opening charts, panning and zooming, and shortcuts for routes, tracks and waypoints.Fugawi; Northpoint SystemsNorth-Up or Course-Up? The Map Orientation window allows the user to choose several options.

The interface is heavily based on icons, many of which were not very intuitive. It took some effort to memorize them all. The fact that some of the icons had to be labeled with letters, such as WP for waypoint and RTE for route, suggests that words may be a better choice than the current icon system. The user interface also has a dated Windows feel. Icons are pixelized and limited to garish primary colors, and the floating windows utilize designs and features reminiscent of older programs.

In addition, the frame of menus and toolbars cramps the chart display area, which is also often obscured by working windows, such as the Waypoint Library or Routes Library. There were some adjustments that helped. You can m ake your own "window drawers" with the Waypoint Library and Route Library by pulling them off the bottom edge of your screen, letting you read the window title but clearing the screen for the chart.

Fugawi Marine ENC is also a very mouse-intensive program. Because its user interface is based on cursor modes, a user has to commute back and forth to the toolbar to switch modes for different operations. Keyboard shortcuts, the typical way to avoid extensive mousing, were limited. The program can be extra effort on the hands and wrists if you use it extensively.

We understand through discussions with Northport officials that the user interface is undergoing a major overhaul as we speak. Future versions of Marine ENC will likely benefit from this effort.

On the positive side, Marine ENC wins high marks for a customizable display and experience. You can set imperial, metric or nautical units. Soundings can be set in meters or feet (although feet are not rounded to whole numbers, which can clutter the chart display). One particularly nice customized setting is depth area shading. You can set the chart display colors by depth, customizing safe water boundaries for your vessel's draft. It also has a dusk and night vision display.

Finally, this is the first package we've reviewed in this series that allows charts to be displayed north-up, map-up, course-up, route-up or–unique to Fugawi–by an arbitrary degree of rotation.

WORKING WITH CHART FILES

One of Marine ENC's strengths is its compatibility with a wide variety of chart formats, including NOAA raster and vector charts; Army Corps of Engineers IENC vector charts; BSB4 or earlier charts from Maptech; files in GEO/NOS format (formerly SoftChart); and NDI DigitalOcean charts for Canada. It can also read user-scanned paper charts and, with a card reader, Navionics Gold, Gold+, Platinum, Silver, Fish'N'Chip, and HotMaps charts. Many charting and navigation programs are weak when it comes to international coverage. But with the Navionics option, Marine ENC gives you access to digital charts for much of the world.

Overall, Marine ENC was very responsive. It was most responsive when displaying raster charts. Some operations were noticeably slower, particularly 3D viewing, but this is to be expected given the demands placed on your machine by 3D data. Another snag was that panning on vector charts sometimes resulted in a lag with a motion-blurred display, where depths and contours smear across the screen until the display catches up. This blurred motion was a bit dizzying and not typical of most other programs.