[GRASS5] sites (not) in 5.1

[Markus Neteler]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 08:18:38PM +0100, Paul Kelly wrote:
>  
> On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 
> > The idea is to not delay 5.2 too much as vector is already there.
> 
> But sites isn't. That's the major off-putting factor for me; I use sites
> all the time especially as the ASCII format is so totally simple and
> transparent and easy to deal with. Also there is substantial sites
> functionality that isn't present in 5.1 or else requires re-learning how
> to do things. I'm not sure though; is there s.sample, s.surf.idw,
> s.voronoi, things like that in the 5.1 vector functionality? Maybe there
> is.

Say, it is there partially now. The idea is to use vector nodes instead of
sites in an own format. This reduces the maintenaance efforts to two
formats instead of three. The sites format of 5.0 is limited:
- no NULL support
- troubles with strings
- slow
- huge files
 etc.

> But it will be a big wrench to have to stop using the sites format. I'm
> not sure of the main reasons for leaving it out (that was before I used
> GRASS and one reason why I wanted to look at the old developers mailing
> list). At the time the decision was made, was it presumed that there would
> be enough programmer labour available to re-implement all the sites
> functionality of 5.0 in the 5.1 vector functions and modules? I can't see
> this happening although I'm not saying I wouldn't help if I thought it was
> a worthwhile effort.

In fact the upgrading of sites modules to the 5.1 vector format should
be cleaner than the sites API (Radim and others may correct me).
Using the Vect_*() functions gives you at the same time
- spatial index
- multiple DBMS support
- NULL support
 etc

and all under a common interface. I assume also that you already find
some functionality of sites 5.0 *modules* in the 5.1 vector *library*.
It is desired to move more common functionality to the libs.

To welcome another 5.1 "sites" vector programmer were great.

Markus