[GRASS-user] web mapping

[Tyler Mitchell]

On 26-Jun-06, at 4:01 AM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> Browsing through the book Web Mapping Illustrated by Tyler Mitchell, I
> noticed that GRASS is prominently missing in the general analysis of
> desktop and analytical GIS - too bad!
> At his place OpenEV is extensively treated.
> All the best.

Hi Paolo,
Did you want a small chapter about GRASS when it really deserves  
serious treatment in a full book like Markus & Helena do in theirs?

Another reason GRASS is not discussed is because I was quite ignorant  
of its capabilities when I wrote the book.  Also note that many  
(many!) other great open source geospatial projects are not mentioned  
in the book because I specifically chose a small subset that easily  
work together.  For example, OpenEV is packaged with FWTools which I  
used for several other purposes in the book and I was more familiar  
with it.

Also, I assume the existing GRASS GIS book should help meet needs of  
GRASS GIS users.  I surely did not want to overlap their expertise or  
compete for sales ;)  GRASS is big enough to warrant a whole book - a  
measly chapter in a book focused on web mapping would not be just.   
Also note that I do not teach GIS in the book, so much of the power  
of GRASS just wouldn't fit for the intended audience.

Finally, Web Mapping Illustrated was to guide people toward building  
web mapping applications.  GRASS can certainly be used to create data  
for this purpose, but I aimed for introducing simple tools that were  
not particularly analytical.

Hope that clarifies some of my rationale.   Make sense?  I wish I  
could write a book that covers every open source package, but that  
might take a lifetime :)

Tyler