On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, Dave Roberts wrote:
Sadly, it's not just Microsoft users that take the GUI view. A couple of years ago GRASS was reviewed in Linux Journal and they didn't even mention it was scriptable. I wrote a letter to the editor to point that out and they responded that that was minimally interesting.
Dave, I think this makes sense in the context in which desktop GIS developed. It was developed and marketed as mapping software. It could be used to answer two main questions: what is where? And, where is what? I'm thinking of MapInfo in the early 1990s where one could do simple vector overlays but the emphasis was on producing pretty maps. This was different from the PC-ARC/Info I used for a year or so in the late 1980s (I was a beta tester for them) and certainly from GRASS (which I started using in the mid-1990s.). Think of the rise of desktop publishing in the mid- to late-1980s. Suddenly, everyone became a graphic designer (in their own minds, at least) and produced many ugly fliers and documents. This is similar to the difference between GIS as a computerized map creation tool and as spatial analysis tool. Germane to the various GIS software reviews and rankings allow me to suggest that we ignore them. Those who matter don't mind that GRASS is poo-poo'd for using such complexities as the console and scripts, and those who mind don't matter because they wouldn't use GRASS anyway. Rich _______________________________________________ grass-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user
