Hi Steve,

You will find enclosed a first example (zipped resource containing just a very plain form). The sample is pretty trivial but it covers the basic manipulations:
- adding labels,
- adding points and lines.

This labelling is extremely plain but it is also impressively fast!

Once you understand the labelling process - you need to define "categories" for them in the VFP form init code and that's a bit convoluted - they are an easy "first step".

Should this be a first solution for you, make sure to re-run the labelling process each time you change the extents (zooming, moving the map in an way) in the "ExtentsChanged" event. In case you do not the labelling will disappear every time you move the map. Of course that means you keep the labelling data in VFP cursors...

Whilst building this "Desktop GIS development for VFP developers" form, I bumped in unexpected serious difficulties when trying to implement more sophisticated stuff such embedding images and nice pointers into the map.

I currently build an application which is NOT connected to Internet (no OpenStreetMap, no bing...). And mind you, I am able to do highly sophisticated "image embedding" when using local resources (shp files)... But I was not able to repeat the process on Internet tiles-based services à la OpenStreetMap. I'll try to solve that later this week and add a few additional actions such as printing and possibly layering shapes onto the map (isochrones and colored shapes).

The learning curve is clearly a bit painful from VFP. You will not re-build a high-end GIS tool such as the brilliant QGIS. But should you only wish to display information on a decent map and perform a couple of calculations (basically distances), that is a usefull addition into our toolbox!

Daniel