Hello all, just my 2cents on this (I'm a GRASS user myself):
The latest SAGA CVS is stable on linux, some bugs were fixed, and it worked really well on my tests. RSAGA now also works on Linux, I helped Alexander Brenning on testing it. SAGA has a very optimized code (about 10% disk space of a GRASS install), is very fast and is designed specifically to terrain/hydrology analysis, instead of being a general-purpose GIS like GRASS. I think that a SAGA-QGIS integration would be great, adding some really nice possibilities. In the upcoming Geomorphometry2009 conference (August/September, Zurich), Tom Hengl et al will present a brief comparison between GRASS and SAGA. cheers Carlos On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 10:36, G. Allegri<[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Paolo. > SAGA community is apprently small. The dev team is small, but they work > hard, even if it doesn't appear from the SAGA site. > I've just chatted with its major developer (Volker) and he was asking help > to mantain the build chain updated and give a refresh to the site (wiki is a > bit outdated, etc.). The latest version build binary is not available, but > there's a quite new snapshot at Laserdata [1], where some of its developers > work. > > I said the community is large, even if its not so noticeable. I have many > collegues that use it (more then GRASS), also through the very good RSAGA > interface for R [2]. Tomislav Hengl has lot of material about this [3] > > Why I'm so much interested in SAGA: > > I find it has all the features to make lot of (vectorial, grid and imagery) > analysis and automation. It includes functions that GRASS doesn't offer out > of the box, that you can find (partly) in the latter user manual (a litlle > bit outdated) [4]. > I don't have time in this moment to list all the differences between it anf > GRASS, and please don't misunderstand me: I love GRASS, and will continue > using it too... but: > > 1 - the GRASS Windows version situation is a major problem, while SAGA > works smooth both on Windows and Linux. I don't know which version you used, > I haven't tried the linux version yet, but I don't see bad feedbacks in the > resent ML posts. > > 2 - It doesn't need to be installed: I use it from my pen drive :) > > 3 - It doesn't work with topology. Yes, it can be seen as a missing, > important, feature for someone and for some uses, but the end users often > prefer to work directly on shapefiles, without the overhead of clean/build > issues during GRASS imports... And that's one of the points that make QGIS, > Gvsig, etc. more usable. > > 4 - The latest version (that I'm going to buid), links well with the the > latest libraries (GDAL, PROJ) and Python 2.5. > > 5 - While the GRASS dev team is putting much effort in the GUI development, > SAGA GUI is a bit secondary. It would gain great benefit from an integration > with QGIS... > > Ok, this is just my personal, subjective, overview. But I repeat I don't > wnat to discourage GRASS usage, but to highlight this good alternative... > > Giovanni > > [1] http://www.laserdata.at/saga_packages.html > [2] http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RSAGA/index.html > [3] http://spatial-analyst.net/wiki/index.php?search=rsaga&go=Go > [4] > http://garr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/saga-gis/SAGA2_UserGuide_Cimmery_20070401.pdf > > 2009/7/11 Paolo Cavallini <[email protected]> >> >> G. Allegri ha scritto: >> > SAGA algorithms were the basis on which Sextentegis was developed. Then >> > this was integrated into Gvsig... Why don't make happen the same for >> > SAGA? :) >> >> Hi Giovanni. >> I have tested saga a few years ago, and I was rather disappointed by its >> (lack of) stability on Linux. Also, the apparently very small community >> was a bit worrisome to me. More generally, I do not understand well what >> is the advantage of using saga rather than grass: have you checked their >> different strengths and weak points? >> Thanks a lot. >> -- >> Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc >> _______________________________________________ >> Qgis-user mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user > > > _______________________________________________ > Qgis-user mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user > > -- Carlos Henrique Grohmann - Geologist D.Sc. a.k.a. Guano - Linux User #89721 ResearcherID: A-9030-2008 http://digitalelevation.blogspot.com http://www.igc.usp.br/pessoais/guano _________________ Can’t stop the signal. _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
