[GRASSLIST:9029] Re: ArcView vs GRASS

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Michael Barton wrote:

> For making nice maps fairly easily--especially in a business
> environment--ArcView is a good choice. For an academic/research environment
> I think GRASS is a better choice.

   I over-simplified my brief answer. GRASS is -- or could be -- a valuable
business tool once it was developed with a modern UI. I'm not starting a
flame war here, and I will not respond to more posts defending why it's still
the way it was 20+ years ago. I went through that years ago and no longer
really care.

   My point is that there are many business applications, separate from
academia and research, where GRASS' analytic abilities are needed. But, in
this environment it needs a UI that's better designed. A good analogy is that
of LaTeX and LyX.

   I spent about a year trying to wrap my head around writing in LaTeX using
emacs. I spent more time looking up the proper tags and syntax than focusing
on the content. Then, despite my inherent dislike of GUIs, I discovered LyX
-- the GUI front end to LaTeX. I worked through the tutorial in about a
half-hour and immediately re-wrote an article in LaTeX. A colleague of mine
(who still writes in raw TeX) told me he spent two weeks writing a resume for
his daughter who was graduating from high school. He sent me a pdf of that
and asked how it could be done in LyX; all this the first day I used the
application. By the afternoon of the next day I sent him the LyX/LaTeX code
that produced the same output he spent two weeks creating in TeX. I was a
complete novice and he was suitably impressed. Since then I've become much
more familiar with LaTeX and incorporate it heavily in my reports, articles,
and book all written using LyX.

   GRASS should be the same way. A user should have the power of the command
line available, but have an easy-to-learn GUI front end. Then it will be as
suitable to the business/commercial market as it is to governments,
academicians, and reseachers who are not under time pressure to produce
results. Because GRASS is available under the GPL, any of us are able to
create the tool we need.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)   |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517         Fax: 503-667-8863