In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

The GRASS Development Team announced the release of GRASS GIS 6.4.0, the first in the new line of 6.4 stable releases. As a stable release 6.4 will enjoy long-term support. The next release (6.4.1) will introduce a few new features which are still undergoing final testing, but after that all further 6.4 releases will be bugfix-only.

Screenshots

• Screenshots of GRASS in action

What's new in GRASS 6.4.0

(selected improvements from the nearly 9,000 updates to the source code)

• Source code quality/libraries:
  • Many internal adjustments needed for native MS-Windows support, for example safely handling spaces in file names.
  • 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
  • New Python scripting language library containing many helper functions
  • 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 multi-processor support
  • Major clean-up of the display architecture (libraries and drivers): the drivers no longer maintain a palette; all colors are now specified directly as R/G/B values
  • The "default" datum transformation parameters are now first in the list instead of last
  • Ability to create new locations using EPSG codes with the g.proj module
  • Message translation (i18N): many new translated messages, 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: A number of new icons, support for symbol rotation
• Graphical User Interface (GUI):
  • g.gui: New frontend command to launch GUI sessions
  • wxPython GUI:
    • Complete GUI rewrite in Python/wxWidgets
  • 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
  • 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.extension: NEW - Utility for downloading and installing Add-on modules
  • 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, v.surf.bspline, and v.surf.rst: Work with massive datasets imported without topology (e.g. LIDAR)
  • v.to.3d: NEW - Performs transformation of 2D vector features to 3D

A more detailed description of changes can be found in the previous announcements of the GRASS 6.3 development preview release and the GRASS 6.4.0 release candidate series.

For a comprehensive list of changes see the 6.4 ChangeLog file.

For a complete list of commands available in GRASS 6.4.0 see the online manuals and the GRASS 6.4 module list.