[GRASS-user] what is jgrass

[Moritz Lennert]

On 17/09/07 04:16, Gerald Nelson wrote:
> I saw a recent post that included a reference to jgrass, which I had
> never heard of, so I went to the jgrass website, downloaded the
> manual, and spent about 3 minutes browsing it. One thing that struck
> me is the question of why is there both a jgrass version, written for
> cross-platform use, and the new efforts to make 'regular' grass (the
> 6.3 version we use around here on linux) run on windows and the mac.
> And for that matter there is qgis out there, which also has its own
> gui and uses grass code to do some gis things. From afar, it seems
> like there are some really talented, and incredibly dedicated, people
> out there who are kind of reinventing the same wheel.

Historically both QGIS and JGrass had the flaw that they were built with
tools (Java & QT) that were not free software (or at least not on all
plaforms). In itself this was enough for some to not go down that road.
This has changed for both, so it should not be an issue anymore.

Another question issue is the underlying programming languages, i.e. C++
and Java which do not necessarily have the favour of everyone.

In a survey done in 2004, to the question "Should GRASS continue 
developing its own GUI or should the development focus on interaction 
with other GUI orientated software packages (QGIS, Thuban, etc.) ? (n = 
271).", over half of the respondents pleaded for an internal GRASS GUI 
(GRASS-News, Volume 2, http://grass.itc.it/newsletter/index.php).

Finally, historically GRASS developers have generally been command line 
users, so not much in search of GUI features, which is the main emphasis 
of QGIS and (a bit less) JGrass AFAIU. BTW, a lot of effort has recently 
gone into making GRASS more and more independent from any specific GUI, 
thus actually favouring any effort of creating alternative GUIs, so 
potentially even increasing the variety.

Personally, up to now I have never found the alternatives (QGIS, JGRASS) 
satisfying for my needs and have stuck with GRASS and its GUI.

Just a few elements of explanation...

Moritz