let's standardize sites

[Mark P. Line]

On Mon, 24 Jan 1994, Glenn C. Kroeger wrote:

> Certainly individuals could write code to use this field for any value.
> But, from a conceptual standpoint, a spatial system such as GRASS, that
> already has rudimentary 3D display capabilities, ought to fundamentally
> view sites as positions in 3 dimensional space.

I'm not sure I agree with this conceptual standpoint. What sites have in
common _minimally_ is their reference to a position on the spheroid. Apart
from that, there are lots of matters of fact that can be described with
reference to such positions: elevation is one, humidity and barometric
pressure are others. Whereas you can't have sites without a 2D point
reference, extension into 3D space is only interesting if you happen to
need it. If you don't, it isn't. 

The non-2D-attribute issue is technical, not conceptual in the above
sense, I think. Having a 3rd (4th, 5th, nth) dimension built into the
GRASS sites format and processing functions allows you to do a lot without
setting up an external database or extra manipulation routines in awk. The
trade-off has to do with how much functionality you want to hard-wire into
GRASS sites handling, and how much you force into external platforms. 

For what it's worth, my vote would be for as little hard-wired into GRASS
site processing as possible, plus really clean interworking with the
platforms that were designed to handle application-dependent sets of
(non-spatial) attributes: RIM if necessary, awk if possible, for instance. 

-- Mark

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark P. Line                       Phone: +1-206-733-6040
Open Pathways                        Fax: +1-206-733-6040
P.O. Box F                         Email: markline at henson.cc.wwu.edu
Bellingham, WA 98227-0296
--------------------------------------------------------------------