GRASS GIS 6.3.0 released
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The GRASS Development Team announces
GRASS GIS 6.3.0 released 23 April 2008
We are happy to announce the latest release of GRASS
GIS, the first major release with new features
since GRASS 6.2 first arrived in October 2006.
Officially this is a “technology preview” release, the first beta on
the path to GRASS 6.4-stable, and it also marks the start of work on
GRASS 7. As such GRASS 6.3.0 is not intended to be a stable release with
ongoing support, but after five months of quality-assurance review we
are very pleased with the results. Users can be confident to use this
version for their day to day work, indeed due to the open development
model many already do.
Besides the hundreds of new module features, supported data formats, and
language translations, GRASS 6.3 brings a number of exciting
enhancements to the GIS. A prototype of the new wxPython user interface
is debuted, and for the first time since its inception with a port from
the VAX 11⁄780 in 1983, GRASS will run on a non-UNIX based platform:
MS-Windows. This is currently still in an experimental state and we hope
that widespread testing of 6.3.0 will mean the 6.4 release of WinGRASS
will be fully functional and robust. Existing UNIX and Mac users will be
happy to know that these new features do not disrupt the base GIS which
remains as solid as ever and fully backwards compatible with earlier
GRASS 6.0 and GRASS 6.2 releases.
Several infrastructure changes accompany this release with the project
becoming a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial
Foundation (OSGeo). This includes a new home for
the website, the Wiki help
system, source code
repository, community
add-on module
repository,
integrated bug tracking system,
and formal membership for the project in a non-profit legal entity. We
hope that these changes will guarantee that the GRASS community will be
well supported and vibrant well into the future.
The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to
as GRASS, is a Geographic Information System (GIS) providing powerful
raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines in a single integrated
software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling, visualization
of raster and vector data, management and analysis of geospatial data,
and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the
capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and hardcopy
maps.
GRASS is currently used around the world in academic and commercial
settings as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental
consulting companies. It runs on a variety of popular hardware platforms
and is Free open-source software released under the terms of the GNU
General Public License.
Screenshots
GNU/Linux, Mac OS X/Darwin, Microsoft Windows (native using MinGW or
with full UNIX support via Cygwin), Sun Solaris (SPARC/Intel), Silicon
Graphics Irix, HP-UX, DEC-Alpha, AIX, BSD, iPAQ/Linux and other UNIX
compliant platforms. GRASS runs on both 32 and 64 bit systems with large
files (>2GB) supported by many key modules.
Software download/CDROM
The new source code is available now and binary packages for major
operating systems will be published shortly.
For details on GRASS software capabilities please refer to:
http://grass.osgeo.org/intro/general.php, the previous announcements
of GRASS 6.2.0, GRASS
6.2.1, GRASS 6.2.2,
and GRASS 6.2.3, and the Wiki collaborative
help system.
What’s new in GRASS 6.3.0
(selected improvements from the more than 3400 minor and important
fixes)
- Source code quality/libraries:
- Many fixes for native MS-Windows support (MinGW based)
- Programmer’s
Manual:
continued Doxygen integration and automated generation into PDF
and HTML formats. Publicly available for download and perusal.
- Improved policies for code submission specified in the
SUBMITTING files for documentation, Python, Tcl/Tk, and shell
scripts
- GRASS-SWIG prototype interface improved (library bindings for
Perl and Python)
- All modules:
--quiet
and --verbose
message modes
- All modules:
--script
flag generates boilerplate for shell
scripts with parser and GUI support
- Batch mode for launching GRASS for non-interactive processing
tasks
- DBMI: SQL parser extended (support for DROP COLUMN, ASC/DESC
keyword in ORDER BY clause, etc.)
- Partial differential equations library with OpenMP support
(gpdelib)
- Moved aggregate functions into separate statistics library
- Display driver: add R_bitmap() and supporting infrastructure
- Major clean-up to the display architecture (libraries and
drivers): the drivers no longer maintain a palette; all colours
are specified directly as R/G/B values
- Segmentation library polished
- Cdhc library for testing normality & exponentiality polished
- “Default” datum transformation parameters are now first in the
list instead of last
- Create new locations using EPSG codes with g.proj
- Message translation (i18N): translations continued, new
languages including Vietnamese and Arabic
- Documentation/man pages: various fixes and improvements (more
examples added, including graphics, improved style, new
introductory pages)
- Documentation: various terminology issues fixed and terms
unified
- Symbols: New icons, support for symbol rotation
- Graphical User Interface (GUI):
- g.gui: New frontend command to launch GUI sessions
- gis.m Tcl/Tk GUI:
- GIS manager extended with mouse placement of text and scale
bars and menu updates
- Updated Tcl/Tk profile and georectification GUI tools
- New interactive command console with output window
- New interfaces for interactive raster reclassification,
raster recoding, custom raster color rules, and vector
reclassification
- New animation tool to display raster map series as an
animation
- wxPython GUI:
- Improved startup screen and interface, including searchable EPSG
codes list and better custom datum support
- NVIZ: Major revamp of interface; output directly to MPEG or
other FFmpeg supported formats
- QGIS integration: GRASS toolbox extended, available from
Quantum GIS
- Drivers:
- DBF driver: extended column type support
- HTMLMAP display driver: NEW - Prepares clickable HTML
image map templates (port from GRASS 5)
- PostScript display driver: NEW - Renders display
directly into a PostScript or Encapsulated PostScript file
- Cairo display driver: NEW - Renders display directly
into a number of image formats using the Cairo rendering engine
- New and major updates for modules and scripts since GRASS 6.2.3:
- db.dropcol: NEW - Drops a column from selected
attribute table
- db.droptable: NEW - Drops an attribute table
- db.in.ogr: NEW - Imports attribute tables in various
formats
- db.login: Support for interactive password entry (invisible
passwords)
- db.out.ogr: NEW - Exports attribute tables into
various formats
- d.barscale: North arrow for lat/lon locations
- d.out.file: Expanded to use the Cairo and PostScript display
drivers to allow export to ps, eps, svg, and pdf formats
- d.path: Support for use from GUI and non-interactive mode
- d.rast.edit: Rewritten in Tcl/Tk
- d.shadedmap: NEW - Drapes a semi-transparent raster
over a shaded relief map
- d.text, d.font: Updated to accept TrueType fonts and
maintain a database of system fonts
- g.dirseps: NEW - Internal utility for converting
directory characters (MS-Windows)
- g.findetc: NEW - Internal utility for locating
support files
- g.gui: NEW - Launches a GRASS graphical user
interface (GUI) session
- g.message: NEW - Internal utility for printing quiet
and verbose messages in scripts
- g.mkfontcap: NEW - Internal utility for generating a
list of available system fonts
- g.mremove: Support for use from GUI
- i.atcorr: NEW - Performs atmospheric correction using
the 6S algorithm
- i.landsat.rgb: Vast speed improvement
- ps.map: Various improvements including new map border
control, rotated and scaled symbols, and allowing geogrid from
lat/lon locations
- r3.gwflow: NEW - Models transient, confined
groundwater flow in three dimensions
- r3.stats: NEW - Generates volume statistics for
raster3d maps
- r3.univar: NEW - Calculates univariate statistics
from the cells of a 3D raster map
- r.bilinear: This module has been replaced by
‘r.resamp.interp’
- r.category: NEW - Manages raster map category values
and labels (replaces r.cats)
- r.colors: Support for equalized histogram, reversed,
logarithmically scaled, rules-from-file, and more
- r.gwflow: NEW - Models transient, confined
groundwater flow in two dimensions
- r.in.wms: Various fixes and more robust when dealing with
flaky WMS servers
- r.in.xyz: Support for extended statistics
- r.le suite: Various fixes and modernization
- r.li suite: NEW - Advanced toolset for multiscale
analysis of landscape structure.
Including single and multi-processor enabled modules: r.li.cwed,
r.li.dominance, r.li.edgedensity, r.li.mpa, r.li.mps,
r.li.padcv, r.li.padrange, r.li.padsd, r.li.patchdensity,
r.li.patchnum, r.li.richness, r.li.setup, r.li.shannon,
r.li.shape, and r.li.simpson
- r.mfilter.fp: NEW - Raster map custom matrix filter
(floating point version)
- r.out.gdal: New C implementation replaces shell script
version, region sensitive with color export ability
- r.out.xyz: NEW - Exports a raster map to a text file
as x,y,z values based on cell centers
- r.profile: Report data outside the current region as invalid
- r.proj: Replaced with an improved version
- r.resamp.interp: NEW - Resamples raster map layers to
a finer grid using interpolation
- r.resamp.stats: NEW - Resamples raster map layers to
a coarser grid using aggregation
- r.support: Enhanced control of meta-data
- r.support.stats: NEW - Support module which updates
raster map statistics
- r.univar: Support for extended statistics
- r.watershed: Vast speed improvement
- r.what.color: NEW - Queries colors for a raster map
layer
- v.db.dropcol: NEW - Drops a column from the attribute
table connected to a given vector map
- v.db.join: NEW - Allows to join a table to a vector
map table
- v.db.renamecol: NEW - Renames a column in the
attribute table connected to a given vector map
- v.db.univar: NEW - Calculates univariate statistics
on selected table column for a vector map
- v.digit (Tcl/Tk): Rewritten for use without X11
- v.digit (wxPython): NEW - All new vector map
digitizer rewritten in wxPython
- v.edit: NEW - Edits a vector map, allows adding,
deleting and modifying selected vector features
- v.generalize: NEW - Generalization of vector features
using a number of smoothing techniques
- v.in.db: More efficient implementation of the where= option
- v.in.wfs: NEW - Import GetFeatures from WFS format
- v.net.visibility: NEW - Visibility graph construction
- v.out.svg: NEW - Exports a vector map to SVG format
- v.proj: Better handling of z coordinates in 3-D vectors
- v.support: NEW - Updates vector map metadata
- v.surf.idw and v.surf.rst: Work with massive datasets
imported without topology (e.g. LIDAR)
For a comprehensive list of changes see the 6.3 ChangeLog
file.
For a complete list of commands available in GRASS 6.3.0 see the online
manuals
and the GRASS 6 module list.
We are always looking for testers, code developers, and technical
writers to help us maintain
and accelerate the development cycle. The GRASS GIS project is
developed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License (the GPL) in the
open by
volunteers the world
over. GRASS
differs from many other GIS software packages used in the professional
world in that it is developed and distributed by users for users, mostly
on a volunteer basis, in the open, and is given away for free. Emphasis
is placed on interoperability and unlimited access to data as well as on
software flexibility and evolution rate.
Release history:
GRASS Development Team