[GRASS-user] [gdal-dev] Using the CORINE2000 land cover/land use data base with GRASS-GIS under Ubuntu-linux 8.04

[Nikos Alexandris]

On Thu, 2008-06-26 at 22:49 -0700, leonidas300 wrote:
> Niko, thank you very much for your contribution. I'm also a Grass-QGIS user
> and Arcgis user. Well, Grass is really powerful but I' think Arcgis is more
> effectiveness specially in cartography and map production. I think Grass
> should update it's GUI and add some more functionality for cartography and
> map production because for the present it's more time consuming than
> arcgis.Anyway thank you again for your tutorial.
> 
> Leonidas Liakos, Geographer

Γεια σου Λεωνίδα ;-)

Nice to meet other Greek osgeo users. And of course I am happy if the
text can be useful.

Please, allow me to express my view upon your thoughts.

I don't know how effective has Arc become now (last used seriously a
year ago -- so it's not long ago) but I' ve always found it not easy to
use concerning map production (if you mean creating a nice map for
printing). It took me some time to understand how precise "titling" and
legend creation works, it was too slow and crashing often.

Another important issue, often not discussed, is that with GRASS I can
work anywhere. I cannot afford to buy commercial tools so I am bound to
be always in the University.

GRASS is faster than any other tool I know, it does take more time to
get the basics but once you got them you are (over-)productive and don't
worry for a crash and data loss (at least on a linux-box).

For nice looking maps you can always use GIMP and SVG editors. Correct
me if I am wrong but most Professionals retouch their maps in some
photo/SVG-editing tool.

IMHO, the question of easy to use cannot be answered with a yes or a no.
If you have to process hundreds of files one way or another you'll have
to touch the command line (no matter what tool you use).

About the GUI, did you have a look to the new GUI?
http://grass.osgeo.org/screenshots/gui.php#wxpython

The screenshot's don't say much. Try it out to get a taste... (on a
linux-box it's not so difficult to get working now - on other OSes I
have no idea).

.

My warmest greetings,
Θερμούς χαιρετισμούς,

Νίκος