VPF conversion

[Nick Reddingius]

Earlier this year we made an attempt as part of an Air Force project
to use DCW as a data source for GRASS.   The DCW access software is
rather intermixed with  the Borland interface code, which makes it
very difficult to just use the access software.  In fact, after we
played around with this for quite some time, we were told by ESRI,
the people who developed the software, that it would take THEM likely
several months to build a VPF-GRASS bridge.  A UNIX version should
be out by now, but I haven't seen it, nor have I heard whether it is
actually done.  For the time being, we've abandoned DCW as a source
of data.  Sometime in the future we may look into it again when the
product looks a bit more stable.   Also, be aware that the reading
of the cd-rom appears to be excruciatingly slow compared to other
cd-roms.  It isn't clear to me whether that is because of the way the
cd-rom is organized or because of something going on in the software.

Nick.