I have no idea what this was about but I was wondering about the tape measure comment.

It would be extremely useful to have a mouse feature that would ping a circle on the monitor.

I use weather charts a lot, also other maps from various sites. If I could ping a circle of known radius over the screen using the mouse, that would be unimaginably useful.

Here is an example:

> And today is the day I select Myddle Ynglande:
> Yte yse central, more or leff, to Britain overall and to the weather
> patterns on that chart.

So, let us all take for example the Low 974 mb some 17 degrees NW of it at the moment: http://meteonet.nl/aktueel/brackall.htm

It is nicely centred at 60 N 35 W and playing Hickory Dickory with one going ashore at Norway at about 15 NE (969 mb, 66 N 10 W.)

So long as the Low maintains that distance, things should be nice
here. But earth-shattering elsewhere.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.talk.weather/browse_frm/thread/6f84108545649fce/d0a0963078353ba9#d0a0963078353ba9

Here is another site that some means of gauging distance would be useful: http://weather.unisys.com/images/sat_sfc_map_loop.html

Imagine just pinging on one of those air pressure centres and being able to say roughly how far they are apart in degrees. Ditto these sites:

http://www.hurricanezone.net/
http://satellite.ehabich.info/index.html

This last one does have rings but not sufficiently large enough to guess distances apart.

I know that the idea of plotting circles on a cartograph is hardly ideal but it would save me hours messing with a globe and compass.