DIVA 7 -- what's new?

DIVA-GIS 7 has been out for about two months. It is perhaps good to explain what's different in this version compared to previous versions. The short answer is: not that much.

Most of the changes are "behind the scenes". I have replaced pieces of the software that were hard to maintain and/or install. The good news is that DIVA-GIS installs again on all recent versions of windows (including on windows Vista and on Windows7, 64 bits); and that it will be easier to develop it further in the future.

The bad news is that because I had to rewrite a lot of code, among other things all the functions that dealt with shapefiles and/or dbf files, a lot of small bugs have crept in. Thanks to a great many of you for reporting these bugs; and keep your feedback coming.

Now, at version 7.1.5, it appears there are not that many bugs left. That would be good, because it would allow me to focus on new things (see the to-do list for some of the ideas, and the change log for recent additions); and to re-instate some other things to their old glory (e.g. the projection module).

The automatic georeferencing module is currently unavailable. I am not sure whether I should resurrect it or not. DIVA-GIS was probably the first computer application for semi-automated georeferencing of locality descriptions. But time has moved on. Hasn't DIVA been eclipsed by biogemancer, and can I just remove the module?

Recent new features include export to Google Earth format (kmz / kml). Of course I would like to hear from you about what you would like to have in the next version of DIVA-GIS.