Request for Info

[Larry T. Lewis]

> 
> We are planning on expanding our GIS lab, which currently has only PC.  We
> run PC Arc/Info, Idrisi, EPPl7 and OSU Map.  I would like to move up to the
> Unix environment. We have not settled on the software that we will use, but
> I am leaning towards Arc/Info and GRASS.  Arc/Info of course is expensive
> and GRASS is not. We have not selected the platform to run the GIS on, but
> one possiblity is Sun workstations.  I would appreciate it if any of you
> would provide me with a summary of the capabilities of GRASS. Also if there
> are those of you who have used both GRASS and Arc/Info version 6, I would
> like to see of comparison of the two.  I know that Arc/Info does both raster
> and vector GIS. If I am correct GRASS is a raster GIS but it has the
> capability of draping vector file over raster data layers.  
> 
> This software will be used in a primarily undergraduate lab. How
> user-friendly is GRASS?  How compatible is GRASS output with other GIS? Does
> it support a wide variety of input and output devices? What are its
> capabilities in terms of map design?  Does the fact that it is raster based
> result in reduced quality of character representation, such as in annotation
> and titles?  How flexible is it in accepting and converting files with other
> formats and data structures?  What kind of a database structure is available
> with GRASS?  How do the database management capabilities compare with those
> of a relational database managment program?
> 
> Any information that you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Larry Lewis                          BITNET:   mfltl at ecnuxa.bitnet   
> Geography Department                 INTERNET: mfltl at uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
> Western Illinois University
> Macomb, IL 61455
> Tel (309) 298-1764          
>     (309) 298-1648
>     
>