[GRASS5] The status of 5.0

[Roger Miller]

On Saturday 23 March 2002 06:28, M Lennert wrote:

> I think this is exactly the point, and it has to be a conscious decision
> depending on what are aims are. If we want to target the average Esri user
> who doesn't want to do much more than displaying a few maps and who
> doesn't have a computer wiz around, then we should wait to be as bug free
> as possible (with Glynn's qualification about invisible bugs in mind). But
> then we probably also have to have working and user-friendly gui and map
> production modules before releasing anything "stable".

How about if we just target the user that wants all of the modules to work as 
documented, and doesn't want surprises in his results?  It probably would be 
a bad idea to assume that the user is a programmer or has a programmer on 
staff.  Developers need to reconsider anything that requires a user to write 
a script or other program to work around an inherent problem.

I disagree that we need a user-friendly gui or map production module before 
we call it stable.  To me "stable" means that it doesn't contain anything 
that's obviously broken and that there won't be significant changes in the 
near future.  Put yourself in the position of someone who invests time and 
money into a GRASS installation.   They probably want their (or their 
staff's) time and money to go into productive work, not into fixing and 
continually updating the installation, particularly if the updates actually 
break work they have already done.

> Very honestly, I have the feeling that we have a very powerful program with
> a lot of very stable and very useful code. Maybe we should make a simple
> survey on the users' list to find out how many people are using 4.3 and how
> many 5.0 in a production environment. And maybe we could even ask them
> their opinion about the release question. I think we should honor (and
> trust) the present users and work with them instead of worrying about
> potential future users. I am more interested in having a working and useful
> GIS (and IMHO letting users discover some of the bugs is the way to get
> there) than thinking about market shares because I think the latter will
> come with the former. And there is no reason to think that Grass will die
> out in the near future just because of some bugs.

I suspect that most (if not all) old installations of 4.1 or 4.3 have been 
thoroughly customized.  The operators will be very resistant to a change.  In 
fact, my 5.0 already contains so many custom features and added modules that 
even simple upgrades like 5.0 pre2->5.0 pre3 are difficult and done at the 
risk of losing features. 

> > (oops, we don't have good cartographic output etc.)
>
> ps.map is pretty good, just not very user friendly...

I agree that ps.map is pretty good, but not user friendly.  Two features that 
would help even more would be 1) a library of geographic icons and 2) 
different line types like (e.g.) the fairly standard types to represent 
railroads or highways. 

Roger Miller