[GRASS5] Applicant for developing

[Thierry Laronde]

Hello,

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 11:51:21AM +0200, Radim Blazek wrote:
> 
> Attacks are welcome. You must expect counter-attack, but what I see
> below is not realy attack, you have to learn more about GRASS to find 
> our real weaknesses.

The first thing I have discovered, compare to the proprietary solution
are the strenghs of GRASS: access to source code, un*x inside, etc. that
is means to solve problems more automatically (by some programming) than
if I had had to do everything by hand. Combining small (well,
"specialized" --- and _not_ v.trim!!) program to have a path from 
orignal_mess to mostly_organized.

> 
> > My point of view is probably limited, indeed perhaps narrow, but I
> > prefer a clean solution to a "popular" one.
> 
> Do you prefer clean solution as programmer only or also as user?

Both, I don't know for others but here the problem was to take data
absolutely not created with GIS in mind and to obtain without remaking
everything a GIS and without some programming it was not possible to
make the work. So I think a GIS user must be, at least, a little a
programmer.


> It is nice to have clean solution, but if you cannot work with 
> dirty data all others are producing? 

That's what I make here, but indeed with easy data (I mean 2D at the
moment, but 3D is in the scope).

> I don't want to make 
> GRASS "example reference GIS application following GIS theory of '80s",
> (even if it probably looks like that), it should be also possible to 
> use it for real work.
> 
> > My definition of "open" is
> > also narrow: what must be open is the door to let me escape with my
> > data. If I have means to import a standard format and to export to a
> > standard format without loosing the added value I have worked on, for me
> > the software is correct 
> 
> Currently the standard de facto is shapefile (very similar to SFS)
> and it is impossible for example, to import overlapping areas from 
> shapefile. Topological format is good only for areas in 2D,
> once you have more dimensions (z, time) you are lost. 
> We have to prove to model overlapping areas in topological
> format (at least for limited number of overlapping areas) 
> or to add a new type for polygon to GRASS format.

As you have said I have almost all to discover, so the discussion will
be useless because I have not the necessary background. 
But what I have noted, as a user, is that the proprietary solution I
have tested was "good" (I only mean easy to use for an average user) for
displaying and querying an already built GIS, but the problem was, at
least here and for me, to build it, and the means were poor. It has
appeared to me that it was indeed the main focus of such a program to
display several already built sources and this is also like that that
OpenGIS appears to me ---I may be wrong, I give my impression. But that 
was definitively not adressing my needs.


Regards,
-- 
Thierry Laronde <tlaronde at polynum.org>