[GRASS-user] Re: import a folder full of shapefiles and reproject on-the-fly?

Markus Neteler neteler at osgeo.org
Wed Jul 30 09:53:50 EDT 2008


Hello Tim,

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Tim Michelsen
<timmichelsen at gmx-topmail.de> wrote:
...
> Nevertheless, I cannot get around expressing my disappointment about
> GRASS in this area.
> * I cannot just point the program to a directory of shapefiles and tell
>   it import all. QGIS, gvSIG and ArcGIS can do this.

We could easily add v.in.ogr.all or v.external.all, I suppose two or
three lines of shell script :) Could be stored in the Addons wiki.

> * I cannot reproject these on the fly be changing the projection of my
>  location.

Yes, because it was decided to not support that (see archive of this list).
And, using QGIS I regularly *fail* to do this job.

> => Whenever it comes to data format conversion and reprojection people
> on QGIS/GRASS Maillists tend to tell the user: get your keyboard and
> hack something with OGR/GDAL (Re: converting .asc to .xyz,
> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.qgis.user/2519).
> In clear words this means that the software is not ready, yet.

I don't agree. You can easily import and reproject single maps even
with the various d.m/gis.m/wxpython user interfaces:
- create new location *graphically* from startup menu, now even with
  location wizard.
- run r/v.proj

Not too much keyboard needed here.

> This tells me that these GIS are not made for "normal" Desktop GIS task
> and mapping.
> Maybe GRASS is good for some very specialised and automatisable tasks.
> But to make a beautiful and printable map from a buch of data that can
> be interpreted?

see
http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/WxPython-based_GUI_for_GRASS#Cartography_tools
-> work in progress

...
> Why did I write disappointment? Because GRASS is advertised by OSGEO as
> THE most powerful free GIS that can perform any task.

Where did you see "any task"?

Markus


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