Manifold may be an exceptionally powerful database backend (well, as powerful as JET “whoops, I had your data a moment ago” can be) but its UI bites. Added to the shock-troops on the support site, it’s been an expensive joke for me. If only QGis could get their QT stability sorted on Windows, it would be my data mangler of choice.

Again, can you elaborate on the problems you seemed to have? In my experience, the activation system works as it is supposed too. What for me is an issue at the moment is the time span waiting for v9 and thus new activation keys, as I am running out of activations! I dont know if this is what you mean?

Would you care to explain what specifically you find so difficult when compared to other GIS software packages? I often hear comments like this from other GIS users that have been trained in using ESRI or Mapinfo. What then happens is that the user expects functionality to be implemented the same way in Manifold as it is in the GIS package the user is accustomed with.

What this doesnt address then is the overall usability, ie. what way is actually the “best” way to do it. ESRI in my opinion is less usable than Manifold, but because most users have learnt ESRI’s idiosyncracies, they expect the same from Manifold!

Concept:
Views are a handy way to control Layout AOI and the present View Pane would be the dialog for control.
Now compare View Pane to Selection Pane. There you have a build-in selections [Invisible Pixel] for images. Carry this concept over to View Pane and have a build-in View [Current View] and use this as the default for a new Layout.

Implementation:
By experiance I definite disapprove ArcViews concept of a “living view” following each later change of viewpoint or scale. Applying the [Current View] by default or by a later selection should internally be interpreted as setting a fixed scope of Locked Center / Scale.