site objects, s.to.rast, s.mask.sh

[Simon Cox]

To those people who responded to my questions on the above topics:

* Jianping Xu from Rutgers provided a nice script s.mask.sh
to mask a site list (it uses r.what to do the work), and

* Nancy Taafe put an advance copy of s.to.rast (advertised as
forthcoming in 4.2) in incoming on the moon for our delectation.

On the latter I would comment that it is a variant of s.menu as
was suggested by many - but as such uses a particular interpretation
of the site list format.  The latter has been subject to some
discussion, leading to a new proposed format from Darrell McCauley,
which could make this s.to.rast along with some other site programs
obselete shortly.

To throw in my 0.5c again - I think that (along with the sterling
efforts on interfaces being pushed along by Mark Line and
others) enhanced support for much more complex site objects is
essential if GRASS is to survive and grow.
I recently heard great things about how SPANS now has a sort
of site-link to multi-media objects, so you click on a point
on your display, and get a photo, or a video, or a graphic,
or at least a text entry corresponding to some data stored
at that point.  As well as the obvious analytical bonuses,
it provides a great platform for a presentation!

Can anyone comment on what has been the recent progress on
the Sequoia project (porting GRASS to PostGres?) and the
Next Generation Framework at USACERL (both subject of articles
in GRASSCLIPPINGS 6/3 1992) which appear to promise a richer
object type approach?

Simon Cox
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from May 1st (or thereabouts)        __  L     Dr Simon Cox                   
CSIRO Div. Exploration & Mining   ,~'  L_|\    VIEPS Dept of Earth Sciences,  
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