Re: Hello/GRASS

[Steve Halasz <debian@adkgis.org>]

Hi Chris,

On Fri, 2005-06-10 at 14:53 +0000, Christopher David Desjardins wrote:
> Hello-
> I'll be starting graduate school in Ecology at the University of Alberta 
> in Edmonton, Canada this September.  I would be interested to hear what 
> everyone thinks about GRASS since I am interested in using this GPS 
> program.  Does anyone know if it's compatible with ArcView? 

GRASS has some powerful analytical capabilities. But it is generally
considered user-unfriendly. This has improved some with the 6.0 release,
but you will still find it has a steep learning curve. GRASS can import
ESRI shapefiles(common ArcView format) with r.in.gdal.

If you just need to visualize your 2D data check out QGIS. QGIS can
display shapefiles directly. After the C++ transition settles down I'll
be uploading a version of QGIS that can display GRASS data and reproject
on-the-fly.

You may also want to check out the DebianGIS project which offers some
packages not yet uploaded to unstable:
http://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl

Steve

> I've been running Debian for only a few months (Sarge originally, now 
> Etch) and I've been using Linux for about a year and a half.  I started 
> out using Fedora, then Slackware, and now I am glad to have found Debian! 
> Cheers,
> Chris
> 
>