[winGRASS] Newbie checks in

[John Robertson]

For someone who has not worked with earlier command line versions of GRASS, 
it is daunting to break into WinGRASS.  In the week or so I have been 
working at this, I am reminded of the spaceship "Millennium Falcon" in Star 
Wars!  I have noticed expressed frustration among even those with 
experience with other GIS programs (and techy mapping in general) in 
"getting into" GRASS.   I know, "Welcome to Open Source!".

Every day, I think, to heck with this, I'll just buy program-X, and then I 
try its demo version, and decide that I'll just keep plugging away at GRASS.

If this rings a bell with you, you might want to check out my "GRASS 
journal" website at
http://jrshelby.com/grass

The current pages there include:
    * <http://jrshelby.com/grass/remove.htm>How to remove Cygwin and GRASS 
GIS. Since there is no uninstall feature for either, this must be done 
manually (and carefully). If you have made a previous effort to install and 
it didn't work, this should be done each time before making another attempt 
to install.
    * <http://jrshelby.com/grass/install.htm>How to install Cygwin and 
GRASS GIS. How to install Cygwin and GRASS GIS.. Step-by-step, how I used 
and re-used the <http://geni.ath.cx/GRASS.html>installation procedure by 
Huidae Cho.
    * <http://jrshelby.com/grass/database.htm>How I got subdirectory 
.../database. The above got me into GRASS, but I did not have the /database 
subdirectory which seemed to be expected. Here is how I got it by trial and 
error.
    * <http://jrshelby.com/grass/spearfish.htm>How I got Spearfish loaded 
in ../database". I did this wrong several different ways. This is a way 
that seemed to get it right.
    * <http://jrshelby.com/grass/questions.htm>Nagging Questions. Locks 
left to pick.
    * <http://jrshelby.com/grass/links.htm>Links that appear useful.
I am recording there each little baby-step I make that gets me closer to 
making GRASS do what I know it can do, and what I need to do.

On every page, I repeat this warning:
Caution: These procedures are those found to work by a GRASS newbie. There 
may be better ways.

If you are a kindred spirit and have interest in documenting very specific 
"how-to-it" step-by-step instructions for making this GIS powerhouse do 
your bidding, you may consider the above website to be an "open source" 
medium to create, one brick at a time, what amounts to "WinGRASS for 
Idiots".  Collaboration is welcome.

John Robertson

   
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