ANNOUNCE: GRASS 5 beta 3 /ogl3d /nviz2.2 available

[Markus Neteler]

Dear GRASS community,

today we can proudly present a new package of
GRASS 5 beta3.

It contains:

- Lots of bugfixes over GRASS 5.0beta1/2
    (Bill Hughes,  Luca Palmeri, Bill Brown, Helena Mitasova, B.Byars, me)
- New visualization tools: 
     - OGL3D: This was developed by Bill Brown/GMSL/UIUC and
              ported to Linux compliant libraries by Eliot Cline
              Features:
               * 3D Visualization of raster/vector/sites data
               * cut planes, transparent planes 
               * light source 
               * 3D query 
               * change of view point 

     - NVIZ2.2 (based on ogl3d):
              This was developed by Bill Brown, Helena Mitasova/GMSL/UIUC 
              and ported to Linux/Solaris compliant libraries by Jaro
              Hofierka
              Features:
               * 3D Visualization of raster/vector/sites data
               * multiple surface, attributes, masks 
               * raster, vector, sites data overlay 
               * cut planes, transparent planes 
               * light source 
               * 3D query 
               * change of view point 
               * keyframe animation 


- New XDRIVER supporting full 24bit (Roberto Flor, ITC-Irst/Trento, Italy) 

- r.in.ppm with 24bit support (Stefano Merler, ITC-Irst/Trento, Italy)

The source code package and Linux binaries are available from:
 http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/5.0beta/htdocs/welcome.html
 http://www.baylor.edu/~grass/ (soon)

 ... and the mirrors worldwide soon.

Solaris2.x, Solaris7 and ALPHA/Linux binaries will be created as well.
Binary installation can be done simply by
   grass5install.sh <GRASS_BINARY_PACKAGE> <DESTINATION_DIRECTORY>


There is a new entry point for updated GRASS 5 man-pages (in progress)
 http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/5.0beta/html_grass5/welcome.html
The g.manual pages are getting updated as well.


We hope you enjoy the new distribution,

best regards

  Markus Neteler
  GRASS Development Team