[GRASSLIST:890] Re: Contracted Grass support?

[Paul Kelly]

On Sat, 2 Aug 2003, Bernhard Reiter wrote:

...
> > 1. Develop a scripted import mechanism which would import ALL the
> > map information, attributes, labels and categories etc.
> >
> > 2. Display the vector layers including labels.
> >
> > 3. Produce rasta images which reference specified 'art rules' ie:
> > road_thickness,
> > road_border_color, including labels.
> >
> > I've been told that I have to use "ArcInfo" software to produce 'eye candy'
> > maps, however I'm determined to use Grass, even it requires purchasing
> > custom
> > development.
>
> If your goal is good looking maps,
> many cartographers prefer to do the map development and analysis
> with GRASS and produce vector output formats which are then
> processed with more general Free Software graphic applications.
>
> Thus depending on your goals using a software chain like GRASS -> Sketch
> or GRASS -> Thuban -> Sketch can produce nicer maps for printing.
> If you need nice raster maps for onscreen display, UNM Mapserver
> might also be a possible component of this chain.

Although this doesn't address the problem of importing the shapefiles
well. I feel the kind of solution the original poster was looking for
would be something based around GRASS 5.7.x (previously 5.1), involving
some kind of wrapper script for v.in.ogr specifically for shapefiles,
possibly improvements to v.in.ogr and to ps.map and maybe some kind of
v.to.rast for 5.7.x that uses special vector attributes (possibly created
by the modified v.in.ogr / script) to determine how it creates the raster
layer.