[GRASSLIST:867] Re: New GRASS intro

[Wolfgang]

Hi,

and I still thought that the 6.1 is a beta and you are talking about a 
6.2? I think what the most important thing is which has to be improved 
for a beginner is the installation of grass. I'm running on cygwin and I 
did not dare to try anything else which is provided by the cygwin 
installer (at least that there is some version at all is a great help).

You are right, as a new user I had problems to understand what a 
location/mapset is and how to create them. What me helped was a step by 
step tutorial (sorry I'm only civil engineer who uses Grass for private 
purposes).

I'm sometimes still confused that some commands need instead of "input" 
a "map" at least this should be aliased.

An other thing I realized quite late is that many options are only 
working when Grass is compiled with the right commands, but when you 
have installed a binary version you hardly figure out which "plugins" 
are working (mrsid in, ecw out, ...)

But I'm not thinking bad of Grass at all! I only takes a lot of effort 
to get into it. Now I can handle some functionality like importing maps, 
reprojecting maps, joining maps, using r.resamp and also exporting them 
quite well. For getting so far having a step by step manual helped a lot 
(and also the mailing list).

A final remark on the EPSG list. It seems that no all possibilities 
(grids) are included and that (at least one) lacks the right false 
northing. Also (when I under stand right) EPSG codes are available for 
Datums and national meter grids (which need a datum).

If you need a beta tester who can "simulate" a new user, then you can 
always ask me ;-)

Cheers
Wolfgang

Michael Barton schrieb:
> With the move toward releasing GRASS 6.2, it’s time we had a new intro 
> to greet users starting GRASS.
> 
> I’d hoped to make something really spiffy, easy for first time users to 
> navigate without getting confused about GRASS jargon, but still quick 
> for experienced users. Alas, I haven’t had the time to do all this 
> before the impending 6.2 feature freeze, but I did manage to update 
> things somewhat from the venerable, Spartan grey intro.
> 
> I’ve rearranged the items on the intro screen to distinguish different 
> functions, changed the descriptions to make it clearer that locations 
> are for projections and mapsets are where a ‘GIS’ is stored, etc. I also 
> added a new button to create a projection location from a georeferenced 
> file (uses GDAL/OGR via g.proj). Finally, I added some color to the 
> intro. No I didn’t make it green, but I did add a nice GRASS graphic.
> 
> Many thanks to Markus who helped me get this committed to the cvs, where 
> it now resides for your geospatial enjoyment.
> 
> I think the next step would be to replace the g.setproj terminal screen 
> for defining projections with a nicer GUI one based on g.proj. Another 
> thing would be to add a search function to the excellent EPSG codes 
> database.
> 
> Cheers,
> Michael
> __________________________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change    
> Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
> Arizona State University
> 
> phone: 480-965-6213
> fax: 480-965-7671
> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton