[Qgis-user] QGIS & GRASS

[G. Allegri]

As a user (and partly as developer) I consider Qgis and Grass
dedicated to different parts of my work. At now Qgis is for me a rapid
viewer, a good toolbox for vector analysis (thanks to ftool and, in a
while, to the Qgis Analysis module), and a framework for GUI-gis dev
(through the great python plugin system). Grass is for rest of the
world (raster analysis, complex geoprocessing workflows).
I understand that the respective dev teams give the best indipendently
from each other, but I think that a complete overlap will take time to
happen... In the meanwhile we need to mix the systems. Qgis has to
deeply redesign the raster core code (and I'm longing for this), and
then will have a lot of work to do to reproduce the analysis
algorithms we can find in Grass. On the other side, I hope that the
Grass toolboxes will acquire a driver-based approach to datas, to
decouple from it's native model...
Waiting for the future, I think that the grass7 python support will
help a lot in qgis-grass interfacing. For the happiness of all the
pythonist (me too)!

giovanni

2009/5/6 Tim Sutton <lists at linfiniti.com>:
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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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>>
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>
>
> - --
>
> Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
> ==============================================
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