On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Bart C. Bautista wrote:
Dear Grass Users,
I am new to this list and I have plans to download and intall
GRASS to my LINUX system. I have been following this list for about 5
months now and my impression is that GRASS still has many problems and
bugs which will be very frustrating for someone who does not have enough
background in UNIX and in programming. Before I plunge into the
Hi, Bart
I have to make some comments on your above statement, for the benefit of
any other "newbies" that are reading this list. 99% of the GRASS
"problems" that I see on this list fall into one of two categories:
either it is a compiling problem, or what I will call a workflow problem
(how do I accomplish goal x?). The first results from having source code
that can be compiled under virtually any flavor of UNIX (or clone), which
is not recommended for UNIX beginners. Compiled binaries are available
for the most common operating systems. From my point of view, free source
code is a good thing, not a detriment
The second issue, that of appropriate "workflow", does reflect one of
GRASS' fundamental problems: lack of support. This is one of those situations
when you truly get what you pay for. Since you didn't spend a nickel on
the software, you don't explicitly get any support! How to resolve this
problem? Well, you've obviously hit upon one of the major resources, this
list/newsgroup. However, you're at the mercy of other people's good will
when you ask for help here. Another option is to take short courses;
ourselves and others offer such courses. Lastly, there are some people
that offer contracted support for GRASS.
As far as true bugs go, GRASS is one of the most robust raster-based GIS
packages out there. Period. It doesn't complain about files of ridiculous
size, and there are no surprises in the results. I've worked with many
other packages, and I keep on reverting to GRASS when I actually want to
get things done.
Obviously, this is _my_ opinion!
wonderful world of frustrations, I would like to know first if my main
objective will be met by using GRASS. I recently acquired 30sec X 30sec
elevation and bathymetric data from the EDC-DAAC of the USGS which I
intend to use in my research. The documentation states that the data
I'm not familiar with this particular data. If someone else doesn't end
up helping you with this, write me back and I'll look into it further. It
_shouldn't_ be a problem to get it into GRASS.
--
Malcolm D. Williamson - GIS Specialist E-mail: malcolm@cast.uark.edu
Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies Telephone: (501) 575-6159
Ozark Rm. 12 Fax: (501) 575-5218
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
format is readable by ARCINFO. Since I could not afford to use this
software because it's too expensive, I would like to know if there is
anyone from this group who has had experience in reading this type of
data on GRASS. I would be very thankful to anyone who will answer my
inquiry.BART BAUTISTA
Dept. of Earth and Plannetary Sciences
Kyoto University
Sakyoku, Kyoto 606
JAPAN