[R] Release of R/GRASS GIS interface for R >= 1.2.x

[Roger Bivand]

Release of revised version of R/GRASS GIS raster and sites data interface.

The latest version of the R contributed package "GRASS", release 0.1-6,
may be downloaded from CRAN (cran.r-project.org) - contributed packaged
section, "Devel" directory, file: GRASS_0.1-6.tar.gz. It may also be
downloaded from ftp://reclus.nhh.no/pub/R/GRASS_0.1-6.tar.gz. This version is
intended for R version 1.2.0 or newer, and has been modified to suit the
changed memory handling mechanisms introduced from 1.2.0. The previous
version (0.1-5) works with R up to and including 1.1.1, but not 1.2.0. It
can be found on CRAN under "Old/1.1/Devel", and at my ftp site for those
who have not upgraded R - something to be strongly advised!

Apart from changes to the compiled code, these releases switch the
examples used to the Maas Bank data set printed as Appendix 3 in Burrough
& McDonnell (1998) Principles of Geographical Information Systems. For
this reason, the package may also be of interest to users of other GIS
than GRASS, or indeed just R, as an adjunct to reading chapters 5 and
6 of the book. The data set help file details how the coordinate data
have been re-projected to UTM.

The release has been tested with GRASS 5beta8, 5beta10, and
the 6 January 2001 snapshot - further details may be found at:
http://www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/statsgrass/index.html. Please note
that comments there about using "R CMD check" to test the package apply
to earlier versions of R: to run the check (running all the examples in
the help files) with R > 1.2.0, you need to:

1) unpack the gzipped tar file (tar zxvf GRASS_0.1-6.tar.gz) in a suitable
temporary directory;
2) start GRASS (e.g. grass5 -text);
3) choose or create the correct location for the Maas data set;
4) from the GRASS prompt run the checks (R CMD check --no-latex GRASS).

R now creates a directory (GRASS.Rcheck) to store log files and output,
and in addition to running the examples (as before) now makes a temporary
installation of the package, rather than using the installed package. For
further details of using R CMD check, use R CMD check --help.

I am very grateful to users who have contributed suggestions and bug
reports and invite you to continue to help in developing this interface!

Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
and: Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of
Gdansk, al. Mar. J. Pilsudskiego 46, PL-81 378 Gdynia, Poland.

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