[GRASS-user] what is jgrass

GRASS GRASS user
,
1

I saw a recent post that included a reference to jgrass, which I had never heard of, so I went to the jgrass website, downloaded the manual, and spent about 3 minutes browsing it. One thing that struck me is the question of why is there both a jgrass version, written for cross-platform use, and the new efforts to make 'regular' grass (the 6.3 version we use around here on linux) run on windows and the mac. And for that matter there is qgis out there, which also has its own gui and uses grass code to do some gis things. From afar, it seems like there are some really talented, and incredibly dedicated, people out there who are kind of reinventing the same wheel.

Are there some politics I don't know about (it seems like an important part of these efforts is happening in Italy. Are Italian politics even more complicated than other politics?), are there really important differences among these efforts, is it just the nature of OS development efforts, or some combination of all of the above.

I hope noone is offended by these remarks. I watch the list traffic for 6.3 users and developers and am amazed by the way some very bright people, who might not ever have been in the same room together, collaborate productively. I'm just wondering late on a Sunday evening if there are ways to make this effort more efficient. As spatial data become ever more available, and processing costs continue to fall rapidly, open source tools for both exports and the masses become ever more valuable.

Regards,
Jerry
Gerald Nelson
Professor, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
office: 217-333-6465
cell: 217-390-7888
315 Mumford Hall
1301 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801

2

AFAIK, JGrass is intented to be more used mainly for hydrological
analysis. Not every GRASS command is available in JGrass, and some
[nice] stuff in Jgrass is not in GRASS (like r.strahler, IMO).

Carlos

On 9/17/07, Gerald Nelson <gnelson@uiuc.edu> wrote:

I saw a recent post that included a reference to jgrass, which I had never heard of, so I went to the jgrass website, downloaded the manual, and spent about 3 minutes browsing it. One thing that struck me is the question of why is there both a jgrass version, written for cross-platform use, and the new efforts to make 'regular' grass (the 6.3 version we use around here on linux) run on windows and the mac. And for that matter there is qgis out there, which also has its own gui and uses grass code to do some gis things. From afar, it seems like there are some really talented, and incredibly dedicated, people out there who are kind of reinventing the same wheel.

Are there some politics I don't know about (it seems like an important part of these efforts is happening in Italy. Are Italian politics even more complicated than other politics?), are there really important differences among these efforts, is it just the nature of OS development efforts, or some combination of all of the above.

I hope noone is offended by these remarks. I watch the list traffic for 6.3 users and developers and am amazed by the way some very bright people, who might not ever have been in the same room together, collaborate productively. I'm just wondering late on a Sunday evening if there are ways to make this effort more efficient. As spatial data become ever more available, and processing costs continue to fall rapidly, open source tools for both exports and the masses become ever more valuable.

Regards,
Jerry
Gerald Nelson
Professor, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
office: 217-333-6465
cell: 217-390-7888
315 Mumford Hall
1301 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801

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Linux User #89721 - carlos dot grohmann at gmail dot com
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
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95 from my hard drive."
--The winning entry in a "What were HAL's first words" contest judged
by 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY creator Arthur C. Clarke

Can't stop the signal.

3

On 17/09/07 04:16, Gerald Nelson wrote:

I saw a recent post that included a reference to jgrass, which I had
never heard of, so I went to the jgrass website, downloaded the
manual, and spent about 3 minutes browsing it. One thing that struck
me is the question of why is there both a jgrass version, written for
cross-platform use, and the new efforts to make 'regular' grass (the
6.3 version we use around here on linux) run on windows and the mac.
And for that matter there is qgis out there, which also has its own
gui and uses grass code to do some gis things. From afar, it seems
like there are some really talented, and incredibly dedicated, people
out there who are kind of reinventing the same wheel.

Historically both QGIS and JGrass had the flaw that they were built with
tools (Java & QT) that were not free software (or at least not on all
plaforms). In itself this was enough for some to not go down that road.
This has changed for both, so it should not be an issue anymore.

Another question issue is the underlying programming languages, i.e. C++
and Java which do not necessarily have the favour of everyone.

In a survey done in 2004, to the question "Should GRASS continue developing its own GUI or should the development focus on interaction with other GUI orientated software packages (QGIS, Thuban, etc.) ? (n = 271).", over half of the respondents pleaded for an internal GRASS GUI (GRASS-News, Volume 2, http://grass.itc.it/newsletter/index.php).

Finally, historically GRASS developers have generally been command line users, so not much in search of GUI features, which is the main emphasis of QGIS and (a bit less) JGrass AFAIU. BTW, a lot of effort has recently gone into making GRASS more and more independent from any specific GUI, thus actually favouring any effort of creating alternative GUIs, so potentially even increasing the variety.

Personally, up to now I have never found the alternatives (QGIS, JGRASS) satisfying for my needs and have stuck with GRASS and its GUI.

Just a few elements of explanation...

Moritz

4

Jerry

jgrass was started some years back, when GRASS had a pretty primitive GUI.
As best I can tell, it creates a GUI in JAVA and uses GRASS libraries to
carry out a limited suite of geospatial processing activities (mainly
hydrologic modeling). For a long time, jgrass was using the GRASS 5
libraries. I don't know if it has upgraded to GRASS 6 or not. As of a year
ago, jgrass merged into uDIG, and I don't know if it is still using GRASS
libraries as a geospatial analysis engine or not.

QGIS is basically an easy to use viewer for geospatial data. A couple years
ago, Radim Blazek--a former GRASS developer--joined the QGIS project. He has
made a number of GRASS processes available to QGIS through its plugin
architecture to give QGIS some nice analytical capabilities. QGIS is written
in C++ I think, and its GUI is done in QT.

There are also other projects that add a GUI interface to a selection of
GRASS routines (e.g. http://www.um.es/geograf/sigmur/wxgrass/wxGRASS.html --
not to be confused with the new GRASS project interface in wxPython).

GRASS, of course, is a very large, complex, and complete general-purpose GIS
for geospatial data management, processing, analysis, and visualization.
Because GRASS is open source and modular, it lends itself well to use in
other projects that have different and often more specific software goals.
That is an important part of what open source is about. GRASS uses GDAL and
PROJ4, for example.

It would be wonderful to have some of the talented people of these other
open source GIS projects contribute directly to GRASS (and there is in fact
communication between the main GRASS development team and people on most of
these other projects). But this is also one of the features of open
source--it's all volunteer. People working on any of these projects do so
because they are inspired to do so for some reason--creates a tool to help
them in their particular research or job, they really like working in a
specific platform, etc.

GRASS is written primarily in C, with many additional modules created as
BASH scripts that chain together C modules. The GUI needs to be something
that works well with C, is cross-platform, and relatively easy to work with.
TclTk (used for the default GUI) fits these criteria very well. We are in
the process of switching the GUI to wxPython, which also fits these criteria
and is an even richer GUI development platform. There is a talented team of
folks working on the wxPython GUI, so development is going quite fast.

Those of us working on the GRASS project, feel it is a worthwhile endeavor
to make ALL of GRASS available to users on as many platforms as possible,
and to make it as accessible to a wide range of users--from those who prefer
to work from the command line and script GRASS modules into custom solutions
to users who prefer a full GUI environment. It is a testament to the
long-term value of the GRASS project that it is also used in an array of
other open source software.

Cheers
Michael

On 9/16/07 7:16 PM, "Gerald Nelson" <gnelson@uiuc.edu> wrote:

I saw a recent post that included a reference to jgrass, which I had never
heard of, so I went to the jgrass website, downloaded the manual, and spent
about 3 minutes browsing it. One thing that struck me is the question of why
is there both a jgrass version, written for cross-platform use, and the new
efforts to make 'regular' grass (the 6.3 version we use around here on linux)
run on windows and the mac. And for that matter there is qgis out there, which
also has its own gui and uses grass code to do some gis things. From afar, it
seems like there are some really talented, and incredibly dedicated, people
out there who are kind of reinventing the same wheel.

Are there some politics I don't know about (it seems like an important part of
these efforts is happening in Italy. Are Italian politics even more
complicated than other politics?), are there really important differences
among these efforts, is it just the nature of OS development efforts, or some
combination of all of the above.

I hope noone is offended by these remarks. I watch the list traffic for 6.3
users and developers and am amazed by the way some very bright people, who
might not ever have been in the same room together, collaborate productively.
I'm just wondering late on a Sunday evening if there are ways to make this
effort more efficient. As spatial data become ever more available, and
processing costs continue to fall rapidly, open source tools for both exports
and the masses become ever more valuable.

Regards,
Jerry
Gerald Nelson
Professor, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
office: 217-333-6465
cell: 217-390-7888
315 Mumford Hall
1301 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
Director of Graduate Studies
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton

5

Michael, Elegantly put.

But all these things out there with the name GRASS associated with it does
make life confusing for a potential new user. I have added a new page to the
grass wiki main page called "GRASS and its siblings; a guide to the novice"
and copied most of this text into it. I encourage others to edit, lots.

Jerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Barton [mailto:michael.barton@asu.edu]
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 10:48 AM
To: Gerald Nelson; grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] what is jgrass

Jerry

jgrass was started some years back, when GRASS had a pretty primitive GUI.
As best I can tell, it creates a GUI in JAVA and uses GRASS libraries to
carry out a limited suite of geospatial processing activities (mainly
hydrologic modeling). For a long time, jgrass was using the GRASS 5
libraries. I don't know if it has upgraded to GRASS 6 or not. As of a year
ago, jgrass merged into uDIG, and I don't know if it is still using GRASS
libraries as a geospatial analysis engine or not.

QGIS is basically an easy to use viewer for geospatial data. A couple years
ago, Radim Blazek--a former GRASS developer--joined the QGIS project. He has
made a number of GRASS processes available to QGIS through its plugin
architecture to give QGIS some nice analytical capabilities. QGIS is written
in C++ I think, and its GUI is done in QT.

There are also other projects that add a GUI interface to a selection of
GRASS routines (e.g. http://www.um.es/geograf/sigmur/wxgrass/wxGRASS.html --
not to be confused with the new GRASS project interface in wxPython).

GRASS, of course, is a very large, complex, and complete general-purpose GIS
for geospatial data management, processing, analysis, and visualization.
Because GRASS is open source and modular, it lends itself well to use in
other projects that have different and often more specific software goals.
That is an important part of what open source is about. GRASS uses GDAL and
PROJ4, for example.

It would be wonderful to have some of the talented people of these other
open source GIS projects contribute directly to GRASS (and there is in fact
communication between the main GRASS development team and people on most of
these other projects). But this is also one of the features of open
source--it's all volunteer. People working on any of these projects do so
because they are inspired to do so for some reason--creates a tool to help
them in their particular research or job, they really like working in a
specific platform, etc.

GRASS is written primarily in C, with many additional modules created as
BASH scripts that chain together C modules. The GUI needs to be something
that works well with C, is cross-platform, and relatively easy to work with.
TclTk (used for the default GUI) fits these criteria very well. We are in
the process of switching the GUI to wxPython, which also fits these criteria
and is an even richer GUI development platform. There is a talented team of
folks working on the wxPython GUI, so development is going quite fast.

Those of us working on the GRASS project, feel it is a worthwhile endeavor
to make ALL of GRASS available to users on as many platforms as possible,
and to make it as accessible to a wide range of users--from those who prefer
to work from the command line and script GRASS modules into custom solutions
to users who prefer a full GUI environment. It is a testament to the
long-term value of the GRASS project that it is also used in an array of
other open source software.

Cheers
Michael

On 9/16/07 7:16 PM, "Gerald Nelson" <gnelson@uiuc.edu> wrote:

I saw a recent post that included a reference to jgrass, which I had never
heard of, so I went to the jgrass website, downloaded the manual, and

spent

about 3 minutes browsing it. One thing that struck me is the question of

why

is there both a jgrass version, written for cross-platform use, and the

new

efforts to make 'regular' grass (the 6.3 version we use around here on

linux)

run on windows and the mac. And for that matter there is qgis out there,

which

also has its own gui and uses grass code to do some gis things. From afar,

it

seems like there are some really talented, and incredibly dedicated,

people

out there who are kind of reinventing the same wheel.

Are there some politics I don't know about (it seems like an important

part of

these efforts is happening in Italy. Are Italian politics even more
complicated than other politics?), are there really important differences
among these efforts, is it just the nature of OS development efforts, or

some

combination of all of the above.

I hope noone is offended by these remarks. I watch the list traffic for

6.3

users and developers and am amazed by the way some very bright people, who
might not ever have been in the same room together, collaborate

productively.

I'm just wondering late on a Sunday evening if there are ways to make this
effort more efficient. As spatial data become ever more available, and
processing costs continue to fall rapidly, open source tools for both

exports

and the masses become ever more valuable.

Regards,
Jerry
Gerald Nelson
Professor, Dept. of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
office: 217-333-6465
cell: 217-390-7888
315 Mumford Hall
1301 W. Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
Director of Graduate Studies
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton

6

On 9/17/07 11:05 AM, "Jerry Nelson" <gnelson@uiuc.edu> wrote:

Michael, Elegantly put.

But all these things out there with the name GRASS associated with it does
make life confusing for a potential new user. I have added a new page to the
grass wiki main page called "GRASS and its siblings; a guide to the novice"
and copied most of this text into it. I encourage others to edit, lots.

Thanks very much Jerry. This kind of information can help a lot of other
people.

Michael

Jerry

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
Director of Graduate Studies
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton