[GRASSLIST:6660] Re: Advice for a GRASS newbie

[Markus Neteler]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 04:17:42PM -0700, Paul A. Levine wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Apologies in advance if this list is not the right place for these kind 
> of questions, but I wanted to get the opinion of real-world GRASS 
> users, so I figure there is no better place than here.
> 
> I am a new GRASS user who is attempting to learn the program so I can 
> use it for my master's thesis in hydrology. I purchased the second 
> edition of "Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach " by M. Neteler and 
> H. Mitasova, which was recommended to me as THE definitive 
> GRASS-learning guide.
> 
> Unfortunately, the book was written for GRASS 5.3, and very early on in 
> one of the tutorials, I came across a command that has become obsolete 
> in GRASS 6 (the d.sites command, directed on page 30 of the book, which 
> I now understand has been replaced by new functionality of d.vect). 

Yes, some commands have become obsolete, but not the entire book :-)

> OK, so that's a good learning experience about how software changes.  Then, 
> a few pages later, I came across another obsolete command that was a 
> little harder to get updated info on.  At this point, having to figure 
> out what commands are obsolete is slowing down my progress through the 
> book.  Furthermore, it seems like all of the GRASS 6 tutorials that are 
> out there assume some familiarity with GRASS in general that I am 
> lacking.

You are lokoing for this page:

 http://grass.itc.it/grass60/index.php
 -> See also the 'Old GRASS modules porting status to 6.0'
    -> http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/twiki/bin/view/GRASS/ModulePortingList

I am currently preparing a table mentioning the relevant changes
needed to use the book for GRASS 6. Work in progress...

> So, my question is this: Which of the following strategies would the 
> users on this list recommend?
> 
> a) installing GRASS 5.3, going through the Neteler and Mitasova book, 
> coming out of it knowing GRASS 5.3, then making the switch to GRASS 6.0 
> when I have some chops with 5.3
> 
> b) continuing what I am doing right now, which is going through the 
> book and learning the changes as I go (and assuming that any time GRASS 
> says "command not found" that it's another example of something that 
> changed in the 6.0 update)

If you like, we can offlist communicate for finish the upcoming
table (your comments are most welcome). Then, in a couple of
days I will publish the table here:

 http://mpa.itc.it/grasstutor/index.phtml

> c) finding an altogether different resource for learning GRASS 6.0 and 
> ditch the book (this is the least desirable option, especially because 
> the book was not cheap, so I would like to get some use out of it)

We'll help you!

Best regards

 Markus

-- 
Markus Neteler     <neteler itc it>       http://mpa.itc.it
ITC-irst -  Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
MPBA - Predictive Models for Biol. & Environ. Data Analysis
Via Sommarive, 18        -       38050 Povo (Trento), Italy