[Freegis-list] GRASS still quite far from usable

[Artem Pavlenko]

Dear List,

Regarding the recent discussion about GRASS, I feel the time is right 
for some positive changes. Just like Ben Discoe, over the years I have 
tried to like GRASS and it always failed me and I gave up. I was left 
with a feeling that I was somehow not 'smart' enough to use it. I felt 
there was a 'conspiracy' around it of some sort. I felt there must be 
some secret manuals or shortcut keys that one can use to start the 
powerful user interface, but no luck:(

I'm very passionate about Free Software and it is painful for me to see, 
year after year, GRASS taking the same old arrogant 'command-line' 
stance, while at the same time miserably failing potential users all 
over the world. Surely, this can only serve proprietary software 
companies, who have an easy ride by using the 'GRASS way' as a way to 
scare hell out of the poor GIS user in no time. If it baffles 
developers, imagine how these users must feel.

I think something urgent needs to be done. I do believe that there must 
be lots of goodies deep inside GRASS just waiting to come out. I'd like 
to see GRASS become a success story. I'd like to use GRASS in my 
everyday work. I'd like to be able to recommend GRASS to everyone. But I 
also believe time is ticking.

Best
Artem Pavlenko
http://mapnik.berlios.de


Paolo Cavallini wrote:

>Hi all.
>It would be easy to overlook such critiques, but I think there is an element 
>of truth we should take seriously. I recently introduced FreeGIS stuff to 
>people with average to good experience with proprietary GIS, but no idea 
>about free software. In short: everybody liked qgis, nobody felt very 
>confortable with grass (the oldest among them recalled their early days with 
>ArcInfo...).
>My view: the good way to go is to seamlessly integrate QGIS as a frontend to 
>GRASS. Older users feel more confortable with the command line and the tcltk 
>menus, but new ones are scared by these.
>All the best.
>pc
>
>At 11:15, lunedì 12 settembre 2005, Ben Discoe has probably written:
>  
>
>>Hi Markus,
>>
>>This evening, i tried once again to run GRASS 6.0.  This time, i was able
>>to get it to run far enough to display the "GRASS 6.0.0 GIS Manager"
>>window.
>>    
>>
>...
>  
>