[Qgis-user] QGIS & GRASS

[Tim Sutton]

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Hi

*Note* this thread was kinda difficult to follow since it was cross
posted :-(

Micha Silver wrote:
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it <http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user>> wrote:
> ...
>>/ Unfortunately, it seems that both qgis and grass devs are mainly
> />/ concentrated on their core sw, with limited attention to the interaction
> />/ between the two (eg the qgis-plugin-grass does not have a dedicated dev,
> />/ and in grass a lot of dev effort has been put to implement a new UI,
> />/ replicating many functionalities already usable in qgis (also for grass
> />/ layers).
> />/ I would therefore respectfully suggest devs, form the users perspective,
> />/ to consider concentrating on the best of each world, reducing the
> />/ duplication of efforts, and improving the (already good) interaction
> />/ between the two programs.
> /
> So QGIS should stay a geodata viewer and GRASS continue to be the
> analytical GIS :)
> 
> Markus

Just as GRASS has data viewing capabilities, it is inevitable that QGIS
will gain analytical capabilities. I think there are good reasons to do
this. While on one hand it may be seen as a duplication of effort, GRASS
(even via QGIS integration) still presents a significant barrier to
entry. The data models are complicated, the tools are not easily
understood by novice GIS users and the packaging issues and cross
project interaction bugs are a potentially endless source of problems.

In addition creating 'vertical gis enabled applications' with QGIS that
use GRASS analytical capabilities puts a large burden onto third party
developers who need to manage the complex interactions between the software.

So while I think the GRASS <-> QGIS collaboration has been and will be
into the future a great one, I would very much like to see a healthy
ecosystem of analysis tools make it into the core QGIS project. Markus
and I had a great discussion at FOSS4G2008 about these issues and I am
looking forward to future GRASS developments where tools can be used
more independently from the GRASS environment and data models. I would
like to see a situation one day where I can just package e.g. libgrass
and toolxyz into my QGIS based application and make use of the GRASS
tool - on 'external' non GRASS datasets.

Great discussion folks....

Regards

Tim

> 
>>   
> In my view, the special strength of QGIS is in its simplicity. Today, everyone 
> and her grandmother want to have access to maps. Any computer user can get 
> started in QGIS with just a few hours of instruction.
> And then the plugin infrastructure gives more advanced/curious users a door into 
> almost everything that gis analysis could require. So, I agree with Markus and 
> Paulo that QGIS should stay, on the surface, an easy to use viewer, editor, and 
> map designer for GIS data, with the "heavy lifting" done thru plugins to other 
> software.
> 
> Micha
> 
> 
> 
> 
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- --

Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
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