(CA-OPENOSX-INC) OpenOSX Ships Grass GIS Pre 4 CD
Business Editors/High-Tech Writers
SWALL MEADOWS, Calif.–(OPENOSX-INC)–May 30th, 2002– OpenOSX, a leading
provider of easy-to-use, world-class open-source software, today began
shipping their Grass GIS Pre 4 CD.
Grass (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) GIS (Geographical
Information System) is a complete state-of-the-art geographical operating
system. Grass is one of if not the most complete and sophisticated
open-source GIS’, now in development for more then twenty years. By the
size of it’s code base Grass is one the ten largest open-source projects in
history.
The OpenOSX Grass GIS Pre 4 CD will transform a Macintosh running Mac OS X
into a full-fledged GIS workstation in minutes with ease. The OpenOSX Pre 4
CD offers Mac OS 10.1 compatibility (including dual-processor support),
additional modules, along with numerous bug fixes.
OpenOSX is also pleased to announce they are now accepting pre-orders for
the complete 460 page book titled “Open Source GIS: A Grass GIS Approach”.
The book has been designed to meet the needs of a professional audience
composed of researchers, practitioners in industry and graduate level
students in Computer Science and Geosciences. OpenOSX has been chosen as
the international distributor for the book scheduled to ship in early June,
of 2002.
With over 350 modules, Grass is the only real alternatives to ESRI ArcInfo
GIS, which when fully-configured will cost more than US$20,000 per seat and
is not supported on the Macintosh platform.
Grass GIS offers state of the art three-dimensional dynamic spatial
analysis and visualization. Users of OpenOSX Grass include NASA, USGS (U.S.
Geological Survey) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration).
Grass in combination with the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, (GDAL)
can import more then forty popular GIS file formats including: GeoTiff,
Tiff, DXF, SDTS, DEM, Shape, ELAS, PNG, ARC, MIF, Tiger, Garmin, ASCII.
Some of Grass’ popular features include: ortho-rectification, Digital
Elevation Model creation and editing, project/re-project raster & vector
data in more then 120 projections, shaded relief with 16-bit precision,
geostatistics and spatial data analysis, statistical analysis, 3D
visualization and simulation modeling capabilities.
The OpenOSX CD greatly simplifies installation and will install a long list
of all the required and optional libraries and programs for full
functionality. The CD is bundled with complete documentation and limited
installation support.
The owner of OpenOSX, Jeshua Lacock, is the official maintainer of the Mac
OS X port of Grass and has published the Grass Pre 4 binaries for free and
immediate downloading. The binaries do not include support or the required
or optional libraries that are installed and configured by OpenOSX’s CD.
The binaries may be downloaded from Grass’
home Baylor University or from its development headquarters at:
(http://grass.itc.it/grass5/binary/mac_os_x/)
The OpenOSX Grass CD is US$40 and 6-month CD subscriptions are available
for US$95. More information about the OpenOSX Grass Pre 4 CD is available
at (http://OpenOSX.com/grass/). OpenOSX is offering a pre-order special for
the book “Open Source GIS: A Grass GIS Approach” for US$90.00,
US$29.00 off of the suggested retail price (SRP) of US$119.00. It is also
bundled with the Grass Pre 4 CD for US$120, US$39.00 off of the SRP.
OpenOSX, Inc. is a company dedicated to serving, and expanding, the
Macintosh community. Founded on the premise that many computer users are
intimidated by the UNIX command-line, OpenOSX committed itself to one
mission- bringing popular Unix software to both the “Unix-challenged” and
the seasoned, Mac inclined system administrator in a friendly, “Mac Like”
environment.