Slashgeo

QGIS has just released version 0.7.3. This release contains no new features over 0.7.0 but contains a number of stability enhancements and bug fixes. There is also an entry about GRASS GIS integration getting better with screenshots.

I'd like your opinion on the different open source GIS projects. I'm looking for a GIS for our 50+ non-GIS-savvy scientists here. We use mainly use Debian. I quickly looked at GRASS, Quantum GIS, uDig, OSSIM and others. Some look great, but I can't decide which one to adopt! Here are our requirements: (a) easy enough to use for non-geospatial scientists, (b) able to read, convert and save most GIS/RS file formats, (c) allow basic data processing (e.g. reprojections, interpolations, data cropping, merging, cookie cutter, etc). For my personnal needs, I'd like the chosen GIS powerful and have a bright future. So far, I believe QGIS is my front runner. Am I doing a good choice?

Tim Sutton writes "Over at qgis.org, the developers of Quantum GIS (QGIS) have been labouring on version 0.8 for nearly a year now. Its been a long slog with a major architectural change — moving from the Qt3 toolkit to Qt4. This lays the foundation for a long lived version 1.0 release in the not too distant future. However close to releasing version 0.8 we get, there always seems to be 'one more bug' to squash though. With some great support from our users, we have now embarked on a funding drive to hire a developer. This marks a turning point in the life of QGIS. We've always been a project made up of dedicated developers dabbling in building a Free and Open Source GIS in our (often limited) spare time. Now we aim to ramp things up a notch. We have had so much good will and thanks from our many users but never had a decent way to channel it. With our sponsorship programme our users now have the opportunity to make a concrete contribution to getting this and future versions of QGIS 'out there'. Initially we plan for the sponsored developer to work solely on bug fixes, with a particular emphasis on getting the Windows version to work more robustly. This is a nod of acknowledgement to the fact that we realise that many, many of our users are working on the Windows platform. If anyone out there on the slashgeo community would like to get involved (for example by advertising our funding drive on your web site / pod cast / blog etc., or becoming an individual or corporate sponsor of QGIS) we look forward to hearing from you! Tim Sutton QGIS Project Steering Committee member"

Over the Quantum GIS blog, the easy-to-use open source desktop GIS in active development, we learn about Quantum Navigator, a new open source routing / navigation system in the works. From the announcement: "The aim of the project is to enable basic routing and navigation capabilities on a roadmap. Given a shapefile of roadmap with correct format, you'll be able to select start and end point of your route. The application will calculate you a route that will meet your needs (shortest, fastest or economic path). This route should follow all restrictions like one-way streets or turning restrictions from one road to another one." I wonder if they're aware of the open source GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav efforts? Related to QGIS, there's a QGIS MapServer project in development, described as: "QGIS mapserver is a server module for geographic maps. The content of vector and raster datasources (e.g. shapefiles, gml, postgis, wfs, geotiff ) is visualized according to the request parameters. The generated map image is sent back to the client over the internet.".

Tim Sutton writes "It is our great pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Quantum GIS (QGIS) Version 0.8.1. Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS lets you browse and create map data on your computer. It supports many common spatial data formats (e.g. ESRI ShapeFile, geotiff). QGIS supports plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost (download here). We welcome contributions from our user community in the form of code contributions, bug fixes, bug reports, contributed documentation, advocacy and supporting other users on our mailing lists and forums. Financial contributions are also welcome. This release focusses on bug fixes and stabilisation of the 0.8 code base. QGIS is available is source form, and will be available as binary executables for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. If the binary for your platform is not yet available, please check back in a day or two as our packages are still creating some packages. All versions can be obtained from our download page. As an open source project, we provide support for using QGIS via our mailing lists and bug tracker:

• For general enquiries subscribe to our users mailing list.
• For developer related enquiries subscribe to our separate developers list.
• If you think you have found a bug, please report it using our bug tracker. When reporting bugs, please include some contact information in case we need help with replicating your issue.

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