From aelon@sph.umich.edu Tue Sep 14 07:28:22 1999
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Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:28:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew E Long <aelon@sph.umich.edu>
To: waphgis@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: GRASS
In-Reply-To: <s7de5673.035@doh_email>
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Tim CHURCHES asked:
> Do you have any comments on 
	1) the capabilities of GRASS, 
	2) its (lack of) ease-of-use, 
	3) the steepness of the learning curve, 
	4) the quality of its output? 
	5) Have you tried the Tcl/Tk GUI front end to GRASS? 

	GRASS is very powerful, fairly easy for a UNIX person to learn
(and harder for non-UNIX people), has pretty good documentation, allows
one to do powerful things rather quickly, and produces high quality
output. Any UNIX person should have only a little trouble getting used to
GRASS.
	I have tried the Tcl/Tk GUI front end, and it's not ArcView - in
fact, it's still a long way from where it should be, but is a step in the
right direction for those who are not UNIX folk.

> Our main requirement is for a tool which can produce high-quality 
> (preferably PostScript) maps in batch mode - hence a purely
> command-driven interface is OK, as long as it doesn't take forever to learn

	It is easy to do what you wish in GRASS: batch production of
high-quality ps files. GRASS is essentially a thousand programs and
scripts with a rudimentary front-end; it is perfect for UNIX programmers.

> Oh, and we have a definite preference for open source software 
> which is also free (although we are more than will to pay for support of
> same from the developers).

	GRASS is free, and does many things which ArcView does not (e.g.
translating between file formats - dlg, bna, etc. - and performing some
analyses - e.g. Moran's I calculations of a raster, voronoi diagrams,
etc.).

Andy


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