Why MiraMon?

After several years of programming Remote Sensing and GIS applications under DOS (first with 640 Kbytes of RAM, later with memory extenders and inside Windows' DOS boxes), in 1994 we still missed a software able to use the characteristics of current PC's, specially concerning 32-bit performance, usage of available RAM (usually several Megabyte) and graphic boards of more than 16 colors (256, thousands or millions). Non satisfied with available low-cost softwares, we decided to program an application having the following features:

• Display relatively large files (for example 12 Mbytes), either in raster or vector format; zoom in, zoom out, scroll, etc.
• On screen digitizing, updating preexisting files and offering tools to connect upon other objects (snap on vertices, segments,...); changes in zoom level or scroll movements should have no interference with the digitizing process, even during the digitizing process of the same object.
• Direct compatibility with Idrisi files, because we used this excellent grid analysis system in many aspects of our research.
• Support for our own raster bit (used in scanned maps) and long (used to store identifiers of raster objects) file formats, as well as our compressed raster files.
• Support for our own format of topologically structured vectors.
• Support for non-structured vectors having string attributes.
• Direct display of RGB (24-bit) color composites (false color, real color) if you have a graphic board able to display several thousand or million of colors simultaneously.
• Direct query on raster (compressed or not) and vector databases, simply clicking with the mouse.
• Support for color palettes with 256 levels in each color component.
• MS-Windows graphic user interface, allowing easy installation on different computers, regardless of the graphic board or mouse drivers, and taking advantage of multitask and swapping characteristics.

The program was called MiraMon (approximately pronounced as 'me' + 'caramel' + 'Monaco'), coming from the Catalan words 'Mira', which means 'Look at', and 'Mon', which means 'World'.

MiraMon, initially thought to our internal use, was growing and started to be more and more used by our nearest colleagues; they stimulate us to document it and to translate it to other languages. Finally, at the beginning of 1995, we offered the first 'external' MiraMon version to the community of users of remote sensing, GIS and cartographyc data over PC's. Twenty years after it began, MiraMon is a program for displaying, consulting, analyzing and editing geographic information: raster maps (remote sensing data, ortophotographs, digital terrain models, conventional thematic maps in a grid-based structure, ), vector maps (any kind of graphic representation based on objects defined by points -nests, water points, -, lines -rivers, roads, - or polygons -forests, administrative entities, -), WMS maps located on the Internet, etc. Every day MiraMon grows and improves, thanks to the participation of a solid and enthusiastic team of collaborators, intensive use in Investigation projects, financing from administration or companies with particular developmental projects, and of course to the licences and diverse economical and content inputs from the users who, like you, have joined this project.

In this sense, the team that makes up the MiraMon project is satisfied to be formed by more than 216000 users registered in more than 46 countries of the world. Thousands of copies of "Lector de MiraMon" (which means "MiraMon Reader") have been made available through the Internet or in thematic CD-ROMS. Hundreds of students use MiraMon each day in university courses and SIG and Remote Sensing post-degrees in different Universities. Moreover, several administrations use MiraMon in their internal or even public map server.