On Wed, Jul 12, 2000 at 07:45:58PM +0400, Mike Francis wrote:
Hi!
I am writing to you from Zayed University in Dubai, in the United Arab
Emirates. GIS hardware and (Windows) software have already been sold
to local and national government throughout the Middle East. However,
there is only one course of instruction at undergraduate level in the
GCC countries, and none at postgraduate level. Although most local and
national government ministries have GIS in place, there are few
trained personnel, and even fewer digital maps. Zayed University is
still in its formative years and we are just entering our third year
of operation. I am an Associate Professor of Information Systems and I
will be specialising in teaching GIS. I have a PhD in Geography from
Lancaster University in the UK during which I focused on the
development of SDSS. I've spent some time working with desktop mapping
systems like ArcView and MapInfo. However, I'm somewhat disillusioned
by the whole windoze scene, preferring instead the GPL'd systems
running on Linux (daring stuff huh?!). Anyway, I plan to introduce GIS
using the GRASS system. But, having downloaded GRASS 5.0 beta, and
managed to get Tck... working, I've not been able to achieve much
else. I've downloaded the 'Spearfish' data files, but I've not yet
been able to get GRASS to load them. I wonder if there is someone out
there who could talk me through some of the introductory things I need
to do to at least see a map displayed in GRASS. Thanks a lot, Mike
You might want to look at http://www.baylor.edu/~grass/firsttime.html .
The first thing you'll need to do after unpacking the spearfish tutorial
is to let GRASS know you want to use it. GRASS manages data a bit
differently than desktop mapping programs like ArcView and MapInfo.
GRASS is at it's best when doing analysis with raster data whereas
ArcView requires expensive "extensions" to do half of what GRASS can do
for free (don't know if MapInfo can do anything other than display
rasters). Anyway, there are lots of docs, but the first thing you'll
need to get a grip on is how GRASS databases work (at least generally).
If you've ever worked with Arc/Info then it'd be similar to a
"workspace".
Enjoy,
--
According to MegaHAL:
The emu is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace.