In the last ten years electronic chart systems(ECS) has evolved from simple bitmap systems to complex software managing a broad specter of ship navigation and safety.  Contrary to landbased map systems  ECS is highly standardized. Today all parts of  chart production, distribution and display is following international IHO standards.

 What is the distinction between  vector- and bitmap chart displays?

• Bitmap chart displays  shows copies of paper charts on a computer screen.  It is not possible to interact with chart data. Chart quality varies from homemade scans to copies of good quality sold by British Admirality. Software is simple and mostly cheap.  
• Vector chart displays presents chart symols, lines, contoures  and area as layer objects on screen. Such systems are highly flexible with a large scale of range of symbols. Day and night colors. Modern professional ECS systems are vector systems. They are more expensive than bitmap systems and users can interact with the system and customize symbols and colors. Capella is a vector system.

To make things a bit more confusing; sometimes ECS display systems are based on a combination of these tools; vectorized charts.  Some ECS companies reads and copies data from papercharts and transforme points, lines and area to chart vector objects. In such systems old errors are copied from paper to vector data and new errors are introduced. Most charts for professional systems were produced this way in the early days of electronic chart sytems and some of them are still sold and used. Today most vectorcharts(S52) are produced from national hydrographic office data.