1. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Towards a stable open source GIS: Status and future directions in GRASS development presented at Second Italian GRASS Users Meeting, University of Trento, Feb. 1-2 2001 Markus Neteler University of Hannover

2. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Outline of Presentation Summary - GRASS 5 Development in 2000 Future Directions - Development in 2001 Discussion

3. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development Import/Export section  improved data Import: SHAPE with optional topology correction, E00, MapInfo, GDAL  new data Export: SHAPE, E00 (no proj. info yet), MIF  „libgrassio“: Standalone GRASS Library suitable for use by non-GRASS applications wishing to read and write GRASS databases (planned: LGPL license)

4. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development Source code changes  Established centralized reviewed source code server (CVS)  > 3000 CVS-commits: bugfixes, improvements, updates last year, especially: improved platform independence  all UNIX flavors like Linux, Solaris, CRAY,...  Mac OS X  Windows/NT/Cygnus

5. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development... Source code changes  new library "gmath": wrapper to support LAPACK/BLAS routines and to provide stable numerical algorithms for GRASS modules  autoconf implemented: „make“ process more GNU like, but still based on GRASS Gmakefiles  geodetic datum shift support: new CoordConv library, in parallel PROJ4 was updated

6. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development Legal issues  GRASS 5.0: 1.5 million lines of C source code under GPL  removal of copyright-restricted routines  removal of LZW: FP maps and G3D volume compression changed to zlib

7. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development Graphical User Interface/XDRIVER development  XDRIVER: modified to use Sockets/IPC instead of fifos  Module short descriptions in XML --interface-description for the forthcoming automated GUI-builder  GRASS Bridge DTD for OSSIM (Open Source Software Image Map) http://www.ossim.org/

8. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development Graphical User Interface/XDRIVER development Example for XML/Python GUI-Builder (Intevation GmbH 2000):  Improvement for „tcltkgrass“  part of OSSIM  other GUIs? v.in.shape --interface-description | python src/gui/python/grassgui.py

9. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development Graphical User Interface/XDRIVER development Example for GUI programming on Apple Mac OS X (image by Andy Agena, U.S.)

10. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology Status of GRASS 5.0 Development New (Geo)-Statistics Interface R-interface (Bivand 2000)  raster  vector  sites data analysis  voxel forthcoming R Memory limit removed XGOBI: interface for data visualization and exploration

11. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001  New version number scheme  GRASS 5.even.x: stable versions  GRASS 5.odd.x: development versions  Two major development phases  Phase 1: restricted  Phase 2: open

12. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 GRASS 5.1 Phase 1 Milestone 1 - Status: restricted  new directory layout  new automake Makefile system: replacement for GRASS Gmakefiles  build shared libraries: reduces memory requirements  separation of GRASS database I/O routines from GISLIB and implementation of „libgrassio“

13. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 GRASS 5.1 Phase 1 Milestone 2 - Status: restricted  implementation of new GRASS vector library:  2.5D (3D optionally),  DBMS support,  64bit compliance  implementation of GRASS-built-in DBMS: allows multiple attributes management  implement vector segmentation to speed up topology build process on large vector files

14. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 GRASS 5.1 Phase 1 Milestone 3 - Status: restricted  update all vector modules  implement basic raster/sites/... modules with restrictions  GRASS modularization:  possible through shares libraries  implement XML-based packaging scheme (module classifications) from unsplitted source code At this time GRASS 5.1 should become usable.

15. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 GRASS 5.1 Phase 2 Milestone 1 - Status: open  implement full graphical startup with session manager,  allow to build locations on the fly from imported maps,  allow location enlargement on the fly  implement sites management through DBMS  implement NULL support in multiple attribute sites lists

16. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 OSSIM-Bridge (Bernhard Reiter, Intevation GmbH 2000)

17. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 GRASS 5.1 Phase 2 Milestone 2 - Status: open  upgrade new vector library to full 3D support Milestone 3 - Status: open  implement FreeType font engine to support any font Milestone 4 - Status: open  GRASS internationalization (multiple languages)

18. University of Hannover Inst. of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology GRASS 5.1 Development in 2001 Conclusion  All participants benefit from Open Source concept  GRASS 5.1 will become powerful and flexible  GRASS is open to new ideas and improvements Join us!