[GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers

[Michael Barton]

Thanks Vaclav

Michael
____________________
C. Michael Barton
Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Head, Graduate Faculty in Complex Adaptive Systems Science
Arizona State University

voice:  480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC)
fax: 480-965-7671 (SHESC),  480-727-0709 (CSDC)
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.edu















On Jan 29, 2015, at 8:53 AM, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus at gmail.com<mailto:wenzeslaus at gmail.com>> wrote:

On the topic of descriptions. I left there what I had there the first time because I had no time to revise it yesterday.

Location = project was there for a long time already but I'm not saying that it is good. However, there should be some suggestions, how to use GISDBASE, Location and Mapset. Otherwise, it is the same as saying nothing. The goal of the descriptions is to teach people and for this you need examples.

Michael's notes (just so you don't have to dig through the thread):

### GISDBASE

"A GRASS GIS database directory contains one or more Locations”

(no need to say that you can have more than one GISDBASE)

### Location

"All GIS data in a Location directory are in the same coordinate reference system (projection). Locations contain Mapsets.”

OR

"All GIS data in a Location directory are in the same spatial projection. Locations contain one or more Mapsets.”

(Locations are not necessarily related to ‘projects’. Mine are very much projection based—e.g., I have a single latlon Location for ALL my latlon data regardless of which research project it is used for. Do we need to say “coordinate reference system (projection)”? Doesn’t just “projection” cover it well enough? These are directories, so it might help to say this.)

### Mapset

"A Mapset contains GIS data. Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location."

(A Mapset may or may not relate to one task; that depends on the user. Some of mine do and some don’t. The ‘common data’ in PERMANENT is not really important except in a multi-user setup, which is not what most people use today. Mapsets are directories too, but as someone mentioned, maybe we shouldn’t stress this in case someone tries to move stuff around in a mapset. On the other hand, and unlike Arc, entire Locations and entire Mapsets CAN be moved without any harm).


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