[GRASSweb-list]paul: web/announces announce_grass530.html,NONE,1.1

Mon May 17 12:15:45 EDT 2004

Author: paul

Update of /grassrepository/web/announces
In directory doto:/tmp/cvs-serv24408

Added Files:
	announce_grass530.html 
Log Message:
Draft 5.3.0 announcement

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<b>The GRASS Development Team announces:</b>

<h2>GRASS GIS 5.3.0 released 15 May 2004</h2>

A new release of GRASS has been published. This is the first official release
from the 5.3 development series, which will eventually lead to the stable 5.4
branch (see the <a href="../roadmap.html">GRASS Development Roadmap</a>)
However GRASS 5.3 is already in reliable daily production use at many
locations worldwide.

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as
GRASS GIS, is a Geographical Information System (GIS) used for data
management, image processing, graphics production, spatial modelling, and
visualization of raster, vector and sites data. It is open source
Free Software released under the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU 
General Public License (GPL)</a>.

<h3>Platforms supported by GRASS:</h3>

<p>GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris (SPARC/Intel), Silicon Graphics Irix, 
Mac OS X/Darwin, MS-Windows NT/2000/XP with Cygnus, HP-UX, DEC-Alpha, AIX, BSD,
iPAQ/Linux and other UNIX compliant platforms (32/64bit).</p>

<h3>Software download:</h3>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://grass.itc.it/download.html">http://grass.itc.it</a></li>
<li><a href="http://grass.ibiblio.org/download.html">http://grass.ibiblio.org</a></li>
<li>various <a href="../grass.mirrors.html">mirror sites</a></li>
</ul>

<p>The new source code is available now, and selected binary distributions for
major operating systems will be published shortly.</p>

<p>For details on GRASS software capabilities please refer to:
<a href="../general.html">http://grass.itc.it/general.html</a></p>

<h3>What's new in GRASS 5.3.0</h3>

Users who have been following the development of the GRASS 5.3 'CVS version' will
not be surprised at the contents of the 5.3.0 release. However it represents a 
significant improvement in functionality and with many bugfixes over 5.0.3 (the
most recent release in the old 5.0 stable series). Selected major changes are 
outlined below.

<dl>
<dt>Datum Transformation<dt>
<dd>Re-projection of GPS and satellite-derived data into a national co-ordinate 
system often requires datum transformation, otherwise shifts in the data of the 
order of several hundred metres can occur. The GRASS re-projection modules 
r.proj, v.proj and s.proj
now support datum transformation. This is built on top of the implementation in 
the <a href="http://remotesensing.org/proj/">PROJ.4 library</a>. If you are not
sure whether your existing locations in the database contain enough information
to perform datum transformations, please re-run g.setproj, which has
been improved.</dd>

<dt><strong>Improved Inverse distance weighted interpolation</strong></dt>
<dd>An improved algorithm in <em>s.surf.idw</em> indexes sites and allows greatly 
improved performance
when the region resolution and number of sites are both very large.</dd>

<dt>Shared library support<dt>
<dd>Using the configure option --enable-gmake=no (this will become the default for 
5.4 when it is reliable on all supported platforms) makes use of a new build
mechanism which compiles the core GRASS libraries as shared by default. This
results in a much smaller size for the installed binaries. Not yet fully 
compatible with Mac OSX and Cygwin.</dd>

<dt>External PROJ.4 library support<dt>
<dd>Users can avail of the latest updates to the projections and datums supported
by the RemoteSensing.org <a href="http://remotesensing.org/proj/">PROJ.4 library</a>
by compiling GRASS against it. This is the default; note that PROJ.4 must be installed
before GRASS. Using the --with-proj=no configure option will result in the old
version of PROJ.4 contained within the GRASS sources being used instead.</dd>

<dt>New tcltkgrass Graphical User Interface menu structure<dt>
<dd>Additional commands are also supported via the GUI. g.help is still 
there, but an enhanced task-oriented GUI is now also available to guide novice users
through typical GIS tasks</dd>

<dt><strong>Improvements to 3-D Visualisation</strong><dt>
<dd>Updates to the <em>nviz</em> 3-D visualisation tool include experimental loading
and saving of 3d.view files from the GRASS database, off-screen rendering and
implementation of many planned features for which 'stub' functionality only has
existed up to now.</dd>

<dt><strong>Experimental LIDAR processing tools</strong><dt>
<dd><em>s.bspline.reg</em>, <em>s.correction</em>, <em>s.edgedetection</em>, 
<em>s.growing</em>, <em>s.to.qrast</em></dd>

<dt><strong>Experimental hydrology and sediment transport simulation tools</strong><dt>
<dd><em>r.sim.sediment</em>, <em>r.sim.water</em></dd>

<dt><strong>Experimental large-scale watershed computation</strong><dt>
<dd><em>r.terraflow</em></dd>

<dt><strong>Useful scripts</strong><dt>
<dd></dd>
</dl>

<h4>Note on changes in datum transformation functionality for locations using the
'nad27' and 'nad83' datums</h4>

Released versions of GRASS 5.0.x from 5.0.0pre4 onward (i.e. up to and including 
5.0.3) have included the capability to perform NAD27<-->NAD83 datum conversions.
This was done using the published NADCON conversion tables, if and only if the line
'datum: nad27' appeared in the PROJ_INFO file for one location and 'datum: nad83'
in the other. Even if datum transformation parameters were specified (e.g. dx, dy,
dz) they were ignored and the NADCON tables used. In GRASS 5.3 any datum 
transformation parameters present in the PROJ_INFO file will be used. These are 
likely to be less accurate than the NADCON transformation (unless g.setproj is re-run
for the location and the NADCON parameters specifically selected). Many more
datum transformation options are available in this release of GRASS and g.setproj
should be re-run if in any doubt that the location is using the most up-to-date
datum parameters.

<h3>Why is 5.4.0 not yet released?</h3>

The developers want to ensure that 5.4.0 is a stable release. GRASS development 
relies on people willing to help. 
This 5.3.0 release is a candidate for becoming the 5.4.0 release. It can
only be made stable if it enjoys a lot of testing. Please give it a spin. 
Report bugs to the <a href="../bugtracking/bugreport.html">GRASS bugtracker</a>. 
Don't hesitate to report a bug which you find in the new release.

<p>If you are interested in joining the developers team, and/or share algorithms or 
ideas with the GRASS community, contact us!<br>
<a href="../grassdevel.html">http://grass.itc.it/grassdevel.html</a></p>

<h3>Concurrent Development Series 5.7</h3>

Major changes to the vector engine and attribute management system have
been implemented in the <a href="../grass51/">5.7.x line</a>, which will 
become the next major production
series as 5.8.x. At present development is taking place concurrently on both
the 5.3.x and 5.7.x lines, but once the stable release of 5.4.0 is made, all
development effort will transfer to 5.7.x.

<p>We are always looking for both testers and developers to help us maintain
and accelerate this development cycle.</p>

<hr>
<address>
<a href=http://grass.itc.it>GRASS Development Team</a> <br>
Date: 17 May 2004 (last changed: $Date: 2004/05/17 16:15:43 $)
</address>
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