Help... Need documentation/FAQ.

[Bret A. Schuhmacher]

Hello Grass users,

I've searched the Web and found a little help, but I'm still a bit lost.  
What documentation there is at CERL seems to be unavailable (Web browser 
returns errors) when I try to retrieve it.  Heck, I couldn't even get the 
thing running until I found the tutorials the ASSIST people put together! 
The online FAQ helped a little, but Grass is huge! :-)  I can't even read 
the grasshopper archives :-(.  Please bear with me...

The situation:  I'm trying to create a mapping service whose output would 
look like something at http://tiger.census.gov or 
http://www.mapquest.com.  I plan to use the maps to locate objects of 
interest to people in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area in conjunction 
with a non-profit service my Web company provides 
(The Dallas Entertainment Guide at http://www.wn.com/dallas).

I would appreciate any constructive comments you could provide concerning 
the following questions:

1) I only need data for roads, railroads, parks, etc. to create simple
block/street maps of the D/FW area.  What's the best source of data for
this purpose? 

2) If I need the Tiger/Line data, how do I import it into Grass?  The 
document that discusses this is at CERL (and seemingly unavailable). 
Which files within the .zip file do I need?  I've seen the v.in.tiger.scs 
command... Am I on the right track?  What about the m.tiger.region, 
v.in.tig.basic, v.in.tig.lndmk, and v.in.tig.rim commands?  Why are half 
the files in the .zip file dBase3 format?  Should I use the m.in.pl94.db3 or 
m.in.stf1.db3 commands on them?

3) Is it possible to convert a street address to something I can pinpoint
on a Grass created map?  I need to put a picture of a pushpin at the
location of a restaurant or theatre and display it to the user.  Does
Grass use geocoding? How do I create the geocode given an address? 

4) Would Tiger (TMS) be simpler to use for my purposes?  Where can I get 
source/binaries for Linux?

Something tells me Grass may not be the right application for my 
purposes... What do you think?

I know these are newbie questions, but I don't know where to look for the 
answers.

Thanks for reading this far and thanks in advance for any pointers or
comments you can provide. 

Bret

______________________________________________________________________________
Bret A. Schuhmacher                              Email: bas at wn.com
Technical Director, WebNet Technologies          WWW:   http://www.wn.com
Voice/Fax: (214) 821-0848                        Pager: (214) 816-0283
______________________________________________________________________________