[GRASS-dev] Re: Looking for information

[William Kyngesburye]

On Sep 30, 2008, at 2:57 AM, Moritz Lennert wrote:

> 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).
>
It's theoretically possible.  I haven't had much luck getting the  
mdbtools working on OSX - it compiles (with some hacking), but doesn't  
work.  There is a commercial (but inexpensive) iODBC plugin for OSX  
(that is mdbtools-based) that almost works, but it has a critical BLOB  
bug that makes it useless.  I've registered an bug with the author,  
but have not seen a fix in the past few updates.

That's for personal geodatabases.

For old-fashioned coverages, it's possible - GDAL/OGR has that built  
in, so you can directly convert those into GRASS.

> 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...
>
See gpsbabel.org for info.  gpsbabel is used by GRASS.  It also has a  
Garmin-only script that uses some Garmin tools (gardump or gpstrans).   
I include gpsbabel and gardump in my OSX binaries.

I've heard of success with gpsbabel on OSX, but I'm not sure about  
gardump.

For serial-based GPS units, a serial-usb converter works (I verified  
that a few years ago, but not recently, and not directly with GRASS).

>

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

"Time is an illusion - lunchtime doubly so."

- Ford Prefect