[GRASS-dev] Re: Looking for information

[Moritz Lennert]

On 30/09/08 05:46, Rudolf Pasaribu wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> My name is Rudolf from Indonesia and I would like to ask few question 
> regarding GIS application. At the moment I am using Mac Computer and my 
> friend who is working in Geology interested to use Mac laptop. However, 
> there are few things he was concerned whether he can still use Arc Gis 
> from ESRI on Mac or should he use native GIS software for Mac.
> 
>  From the website I knew that Grass GIS is native for Mac but whether 
> the program compatible with ArcGIS software or not is not clear to me. 
> So, these the questions I would like to know:
> 1. Would be possible to convert all ArcGIS data to Grass GIS like open 
> file Word created in Windows in Mac? If yes, is there any change appear 
> on Grass GIS of the data or would it be open as what it appeared in ArcGIS?

No, you cannot just open ArcGIS data concerning layout, etc. Accessing 
data from an ArcGIS Geodatabase is possible if your ogr file 
transformation library is configured accordingly (don't know what the 
situation is on Mac).

The easiest way to get data from ArcGIS to GRASS is to export to 
shapefile and reimport to GRASS. You will, however, loose all layouting, 
table links, etc.

> 2. Is there  GPS that can work with Mac? Like Garmin, which type/model?

Not sure, but I would think that any USB device should be usable, so you 
might need a serial-to-usb converter...

> 3. Is there a demo version of Grass GIS I can try should answer to 
> number 1 is yes?

As GRASS is free software, you can just download and install GRASS from 
[1]. You might want to download some demo data to play around with, 
first [2]. You should also read through some documentation first, at 
least [3], [4], [5].

Moritz

[1] http://grass.osgeo.org/download/index.php (I would recommend you get 
version 6.3)
[2] http://grass.osgeo.org/download/data.php
[3] http://grass.osgeo.org/grass63/manuals/html63_user/helptext.html
[4] http://grass.osgeo.org/grass63/manuals/html63_user/vectorintro.html
[5] http://grass.osgeo.org/grass63/manuals/html63_user/rasterintro.html