Newbie query

[Eric G . Miller]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2000 at 07:45:58PM +0400, Mike Francis wrote:
> Hi!
> I am writing to you from Zayed University in Dubai, in the United Arab
> Emirates. GIS hardware and (Windows) software have already been sold
> to local and national government throughout the Middle East. However,
> there is only one course of instruction at undergraduate level in the
> GCC countries, and none at postgraduate level. Although most local and
> national government ministries have GIS in place, there are few
> trained personnel, and even fewer digital maps. Zayed University is
> still in its formative years and we are just entering our third year
> of operation. I am an Associate Professor of Information Systems and I
> will be specialising in teaching GIS. I have a PhD in Geography from
> Lancaster University in the UK  during which I focused on the
> development of SDSS. I've spent some time working with desktop mapping
> systems like ArcView and MapInfo. However, I'm somewhat disillusioned
> by the whole windoze scene, preferring instead the GPL'd systems
> running on Linux (daring stuff huh?!). Anyway, I plan to introduce GIS
> using the GRASS system. But, having downloaded GRASS 5.0 beta, and
> managed to get Tck... working, I've not been able to achieve much
> else. I've downloaded the 'Spearfish' data files, but I've not yet
> been able to get GRASS to load them. I wonder if there is someone out
> there who could talk me through some of the introductory things I need
> to do to at least see a map displayed in GRASS.  Thanks a lot, Mike

You might want to look at http://www.baylor.edu/~grass/firsttime.html .

The first thing you'll need to do after unpacking the spearfish tutorial
is to let GRASS know you want to use it.  GRASS manages data a bit
differently than desktop mapping programs like ArcView and MapInfo.
GRASS is at it's best when doing analysis with raster data whereas
ArcView requires expensive "extensions" to do half of what GRASS can do
for free (don't know if MapInfo can do anything other than display
rasters).  Anyway, there are lots of docs, but the first thing you'll
need to get a grip on is how GRASS databases work (at least generally).
If you've ever worked with Arc/Info then it'd be similar to a
"workspace".

Enjoy,

-- 
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