[GRASSLIST:885] Re: New GRASS intro

[Michael Barton]

Thanks Wolfgang.

For what it's worth, ArcGIS needs to have many things separately installed
(some of which you must buy for quite a bit of money) to have full
functionality. 

I very much agree with you about the installation. It's getting much better
than it used to be (when everyone had to run the command-line installer
script for binaries AFTER installing things like GDAL), but we need more
help in maintaining binaries.

Because GRASS has evolved through contributions of many people over many
years, it still has some inconsistencies (e.g., input vs. map, although
sometimes this is sensible). As more developers begin to help with the
program, a lot of this is getting cleaned up. I've seen enormous changes
over the past 2 years. Your input as a user (and maybe helping work on GRASS
eventually) is welcome.

With respect to the numbering, odd numbers are development versions/betas
and even numbers are stable versions. 6.0 was released a little over a year
ago and we're now working towards a new stable release with lots of
improvements.

Stay tuned.

Cheers
Michael
__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton



> From: Wolfgang <wollez at gmx.net>
> Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 22:45:36 +0200
> To: <GRASSLIST at baylor.edu>
> Cc: <grass5 at grass.itc.it>
> Subject: [GRASSLIST:867] Re: New GRASS intro
> 
> 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, it¹s time we had a new intro
>> to greet users starting GRASS.
>> 
>> I¹d 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 haven¹t 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.
>> 
>> I¹ve 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 ŒGIS¹ 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 didn¹t 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