[GRASS5] joining GRASS development

[Benjamin Ducke]

Hello, GRASS developers,

I would like to join GRASS 5.7 development officially.

Some of you may know that I wrote some spatial prediction
modules for GRASS 5.4 and that they are available from
Michael Barton's GRASS pages. 

my intention as an archaeological researcher is mainly
to enhance GRASS 5 functionality in a number of fields where
I think it is still lacking:

1. spatial statistics and point pattern analysis:
	- needed for teaching students and basic research
	  (w/o the user having to install and use R)
	- basic signficance and spatial autocorrelation tests
	- advanced voronoi tesselation including weighted voronoi diagrams

2. geophysical analysis
	- would love to be able to analyse data from the field in
	  GRASS in a straight-forward way
	- worked on a whitepaper together with Michael Barton and
	  Craig Funkmeister and other contributors,
	  but after the first revision was posted on the GRASS user
	  list, there was no more feedback
	- still think that a geophysical framework would be great for
	  GRASS and would want to keep working on it

3. probabilistic analysis
	- extend functionality of predictive modelling tools to vector
          and site evidence maps
	- create a basic framework for bayesian modelling and inference

4. Several smaller things
	- transparent overlay of raster and vector layers
	- misc modules that make things a bit easier for beginners

5. GUI things
	- a simple colormap editor
	- a new menu entry "Extensions" in the GIS manager through which
	  packages with distinct functionality (such as predictive modelling)
	  can be installed (using binaries) into the user's current GRASS 
	  installation. Such an extension manager should also make it possible
          to retreive updates over the internet, merge package documentation
          with the GRASS doc tree, cleanly remove installed packages and
          provide GUI forms for all modules included in a package.

These are the things I am currently working on, there are many more smaller items
on my list.
I feel that to really start with GRASS 5.7 programming, I would need more detailed
information on the current vector engine:

- where can complete API documentation be found?
- which parts of the API are stable and which are still in development or unimplemented?
- is there a short text that could get me started with 5.7 vector programming?

Best regards,

Benjamin