Fwd: RE: [OSGeo Africa] GRASS GIS 6.1.0 released 11 August 2006

[Sindile Bidla]

>>> Sindile Bidla 08/23/06 10:47 AM >>>
Hi Gavin

Very much so, currently I am looking at Qgis and how it would address what is on the National Curriculumn Statement for Grades 10-12.  In fact I have looked at ArcView and the problem I have is with licences - this might not be sustainable in the long run.



>>> "Gavin Fleming" <GavinF at mintek.co.za> 08/22/06 11:48 AM >>>
Hi Sindile

My wife Bridget teaches geography at St Davids Marist Inanda and has
made huge progress using GIS in the classroom. She uses Google Earth,
Geomatica (http://www.geomatica.co.za/) and ArcView. None of these is
OSS, but I and others are investigating OSS GIS tools for the classroom.
All OSS GIS tools are of course available for the classroom, but these
need to be packaged and adapted for widespread use in schools. Are you
perhaps interested in such an initiative?

Gavin


-----Original Message-----
From: Sindile Bidla [mailto:SXJBIdla at dla.gov.za] 
Sent: 18 August 2006 11:37 AM
To: africa at africa.osgeo.org; Gavin Fleming
Subject: Re: [OSGeo Africa] GRASS GIS 6.1.0 released 11 August 2006

Good day

Has anyone have experience on OSS GIS application that could be ideal in
a educational environment (preferably on a Windows platform).  Any
information will be greately appreciated.

>>> GavinF at mintek.co.za 08/11/06 1:42 PM >>>

The GRASS Development Team announces:

GRASS GIS 6.1.0 released 11 August 2006

A new technology preview version of GRASS GIS is being released today
in preparation for the next benchmark release, GRASS 6.2. This feature
release, version 6.1.0, improves upon the previous stable version of
GRASS by adding hundreds of new features as well as support for the
latest GIS data formats.

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to
as GRASS, is a Geographic Information System (GIS) combining powerful
raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines into a single
integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling,
visualization of raster and vector data, management and analysis of
geospatial data, and the processing of satellite and aerial
imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated
presentation graphics and hardcopy maps.

GRASS is currently used around the world in academic and commercial
settings as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental
consulting companies. It runs on a variety of popular hardware
platforms and is Free open source software released under the terms of
the GNU General Public License.

Joining GRASS's well-developed raster engine the GRASS 6 series
introduced a new topological 2D/3D vector engine featuring support for
vector network analysis and SQL-based DBMS management of linked
attributes. This release improves the integration and functionality of
the raster and vector engines, and 3D raster (voxel) support has been
greatly enhanced.

A new graphical GIS manager and menu system has been implemented,
while the old GUI display manager has been retained and improved for
legacy support. The NVIZ visualization tool has been enhanced to
display 3D vector data and voxel volumes and supports the creation of
on-the-fly MPEG animations. Additional improvements include
substantial message translation (i18n) with support for FreeType
fonts, including multi-byte Asian characters, and tools to allow new
project locations to be automatically generated from input data or
EPSG code.

This is the first release of GRASS as a proposed founding project of
the new Open Source Geospatial Foundation. In support of the movement
towards consolidation in the open source geospatial software world,
GRASS is tightly integrated with the latest GDAL/OGR libraries. This
enables access to an extensive range of raster and vector formats,
including OGC-conformal Simple Features. GRASS also makes use of the
highly regarded PROJ.4 software library with support for most known
map projections and the easy definition of new and rare map
projections via custom parameterization.

Full announcement:
 http://grass.itc.it/announces/announce_grass610.html 

Short project description
 http://grass.itc.it/announces/abstract_grass610.txt 

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