[GRASS5] Let's release 5.4 asap

[Paul Kelly]

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004, Paolo Cavallini wrote:

> At 16:57, sabato 02 ottobre 2004, Bernhard Reiter has probably written:
>> For now the recommended version (or when in doubt is): 5.3.
>>
> Sorry, but I do not see your point (I may be naive): why should I use 5.3
> instead of 5.7? I cannot afford missing the new vector functionalities, and I
> think few professional gis users could, nowadays.
> So why exactly we could not recommend 5.7 straight away?

I think quite a lot of it is a question of what you are used to. If you 
get used to the vector functionality in 5.7 and are comfortable with using 
it, you will start using it for all analyses, even when many of them could 
also be done as raster analyses. So it may not be as vital as you think. I 
don't know though; I'm not a GIS professional---just suggesting a possible 
reason why it may not be quite as vital as you suggest.

And more generally also, I think it is a question of what you are used to. 
If someone's first experience is of GRASS is 5.7 and you have never used 
5.3, then you would not miss the features of 5.3 that are not in 5.7. Some 
other reasons:

5.7 is very Linux-oriented and not well-tested on other operating systems

5.7 lacks the simplicity of the ASCII sites format in 5.3

There are also many 5.3 commands people are used to that are not ported to 
5.7. And should not be, either because they will be obsolete or they 
contain many bugs and one of the aims of 5.7 was to re-write things and 
remove bugs when they were being moved over. E.g. v.in.dxf, d.extend, 
interactive g.region, SG3d...

There is no reason now to use 5.0, but I think 5.3 and 5.7 can co-exist 
side-by-side on the same system.

Paul