HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 09:00:58 +0100
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         wigeosta@WU-WIEN.AC.AT
Subject:      Re: ISBN for Laurini & Thompson's Fundamentals of GIS?

Trevor,
here's the complete reference:

Robert Laurini and Derek Thompson (1992):Fundamentals of Spatial
       Information Systems. London et al.: Academic Press.
       (The A.P.I.C. Series Number 37)       ISBN 0-12-438380-7

Contents:

PART ONE    INTRODUCTION TO THE SPATIAL CONTEXT (pp.3-26)
Chapter 1   Geomatics: Introduction to spatial information systems
Chapter 2   Needs: Purposes and types of spatial problem
Chapter 3   Semantics: Objects, surfaces, data

PART TWO    GEOMETRIES FOR SPATIAL DATA (pp.27-112)
Chapter 4   Geometries: Position, representation, dimensions
Chapter 5   Topology: Graphs, areas, ordering
Chapter 6   Tesselations: Regular and irregular cells, hierarchies
Chapter 7   Manipulations: Interpolations, geometric operations,
            transformations
Chapter 8   Spatial analysis: Attribute data, modelling, integration

PART THREE  CONCEPTUAL MODELLING FOR SPATIAL DATA (pp.113-350)
Chapter 9   Design for Information Systems: Methodologies, issues
Chapter 10  Spaghetti: Conceptual modelling of line-oriented objects
Chapter 11  Pizza: Conceptual modelling for areas and voulumes
Chapter 12  Spatial Object Modelling: Views, integration, complexities

PART FOUR   SPATIAL DATA RETRIEVAL AND REASONING (pp.351-670)
Chapter 13  Algebras: Relational and Peano tuple
Chapter 14  Spatial Queries: Types, algorithms
Chapter 15  Access and Quality: Spatial indices and integrity
            constraints
Chapter 16  Hypermedia: Multimedia spatial information systems
            and hypermaps
Chapter 17  Spatial Knowledge: Intelligent spatial information
            systems

+--------------------------------------------------------+
! Petra Staufer                                          !
!                                                        !
! Vienna University of Economics                         !
! and Business Administration                            !
! Department of Social and Economic Geography            !
! Augasse 2-6, A-1090 Wien, Austria                      !
!                                                        !
! E-mail: wigeosta@awiwuw11.wu-wien.ac.at                !
!     or: wigeosta@nestroy.wu-wien.ac.at                 !
! Fax: +43-1-31336-703, Phone: +43-1-31336-4845 or -4206 !
+--------------------------------------------------------+
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Via: uk.ac.york.vaxa; Tue, 17 Nov 1992 11:02:47 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 10:59:00 GMT
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         Peter Halls <PJH1@VAXA.YORK.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re the pricing of digital (map) data

"Neel Smith
 nsmith@polar.bowdoin.edu" writes ...

>The current thread on pricing of digital data suggests that it is not
>easy for academics with limited funding to get access to coverage of
>very large areas:  are pricing policies limiting the scale of problems
>GIS research is addressing today ?

Yes, in the UK at least.  Part of this is due to the fact that the state mapping
agency, the OS, is being required to make 'finacial sector' type 'returns on
investment'.  As they (the OS) have a monopoly on the provision of base mapping
and have, hitherto, been amenable, the OS material forms the basis of virtually
all 'value added' mapping, such as soil, geology, hydrology, land utilisation,
etc., surveys.  Even the national census data is defined in terms of OS 'owned'
spatial descriptions.  This removes from academic access virtually all national
information since the current status is that the royalties / usage fees have
to be paid many times over for the same area where, say, geology, soils and
land utilisation, are under study.

>I would be very interested in learning what are the largest areas
>people are looking at in their research, and what kinds of data they
>are using.  Are people actively working on problems bigger than, say,
>a single Ordinance Survey sheet (and smaller than DCW!) ?

These comments are made with prime respect to an institution where GIS is not
a 'pure' discipline but an 'applied' discipline in terms of a research tool
in the sciences, social sciences and the humanities.  We do not offer Earth
Sciences at York ...

Within any given institution there are likely to be people studying both
small and large areas in their individual disciplines.  Rightly, or wrongly,
often a UK institution will try to coordinate the provision of such material
so that, as the research requirements change / develop around the disciplines
so appropriate data will be supported.  The sum of the various disciplines'
requirments may well be something like topographic and DTM national cover at
1 : 50000 together with largish areas at c 1 : 10000 (or 1 : 250000) and, for
some disciplines, small areas at significant scales such as 1 : 1250.

Peter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PPPPPPH      H  | Peter Halls - University of York Computing Service -
P     P      H  |
P     P      H  | Email: PJH1@UK.AC.YORK  ... or t'other way about
PPPPPPJHHHHHHH  | Telephone: 0904 433806  FAX: 0904 433740
P     J      H  | Smail: Computing Servive,
P     J      H  |        University of York,
P     J      H  |        Heslington.
      J         |        YORK Y01 5DD
  J   J         |        England.
   JJJ          |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 11:38:00 EST
From:         ld44 <Lynda_L_DOWNS@UMAIL.UMD.EDU>
Subject:      DEM CONVERSION TO ARC/INFO

Hi Netters,

Has anyone out there had luck with converting USGS DEMs to ARC/INFO lattice?
We have the standard 9 track tapes from USGS. They are in fixed format and
ARC/INFO needs the format to be variable. DEMLATTICE command instructions
say to use DEMREAD in UTOOLS to unfix the tapes. Our problem is that our
tape reader is on a HP machine and will not unblock the tape as it reads it.
Once the file is on the SUN no version of the unblock command (that we have
come up with) works.

If anybody has been successful at this, I sure would like to know what you
did.

**As an aside - does anybody know why ARC/INFO will only read variable length
DEMs when USGS only makes fixed length DEMs? Aren't they the maine DEM source?

Thanks.

Lynda Downs
Laboratory for Coastal Research/Dept. of Geography
University of Maryland
From: fielding@GEOLOGY.TN.CORNELL.EDU ((Eric Fielding other acct))
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Subject: Re: Scale of problems?
Date: 16 Nov 92 05:27:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: Geology.9211161527.AA08081
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU


 We work on "regional" studies of geology and climate. We were lucky to have
a NASA grant to acquire Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images before the
commercialization, so we managed to get about 60 TM scenes covering the
Central Andes between about 15 degrees south lat and 35 degrees south. Since
that grant ended, we have been unable to afford more than a few TM scenes to
add multi-temporal coverage or expand to other areas. Of course, we would
like to have ready-made GIS data, but there is not any coverage in the
Andes mountains that we have been able to find. We had to digitize our own
topography data, for example.

 Another project that I am active in is a study of the geology and climate of
the entire Tibetan plateau. Here we are clearly limited by the impossible
expense of the ~100 TM scenes that cover Tibet.

			++Eric Fielding
eric@geology.cornell.edu
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 09:58:23 GMT+1300
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         Jay Gao <GEOG-JG@GEOG.AUKUNI.AC.NZ>
Subject:      Re: RM reading lists

Dear Netters,

I have seen the discussion on GIS reading lists on the net recently.
I wonder whether I can get similar information from someone out there
who has reading lists for remote sensing.  Any topics under remote
sensing covered by the lists would be helpful.  Please respond
directly to me at geog-jg@geog.aukuni.ac.nz.

Thanks in advance.  I will summarize the result if there is enough
information.

Jay Gao
University of Auckland
NEW ZEALAND
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:37:21 +0100
From:         koop@CC.RUU.NL
Subject:      Re: PC dBase mapping software

>MapInfo is also a competent low-end package.  They have traditionally
>supported most of the common PC spreadsheet and database formats, and I
>know now, that they have something called MapBASIC that should enable you
>to do just about anything.  They get their maps from GDT and their labelling
>features are pretty nice.  It runs in Windows.

>They *do* have a working relationship with Intergraph, so any data from their l
   ine of products would
>surely go over as well.

Is there anyone who can tell us a bit more about the interface between
INTERGRAPH, MGE/SX and MapInfo. I heard that INTERGRAPH is currently
developing such a product.

Olev
===============================================
Olev Koop                                             E-Mail: koop@cc.ruu.nl
Cartography Section                             Phone :  +31 30 531379
Faculty of Geographic Sciences
Utrecht University
The Netherlands
===============================================
From: acooper@nuustak.csir.co.za (Antony Cooper)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Subject: Re: Textbook costs
Date: 19 Nov 1992 08:51:17 +0200
Organization: CSIR, South AFrica
NNTP-Posting-Host: nuustak.csir.co.za

Thus spake eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya):

>In article <921117.071128.SAT.RSIU42A@SAUPM00.BITNET>
>RSIU42A@SAUPM00.BITNET (Trevor D. Rotzien) writes:
>>Are university texts really that expensive to produce??

>Yes.
>The biologist Garrett Hardin wrote an editorial in Science years ago on
>this crisis.  It is a problem which is not getting resolved.

>I just paid $150 for a text book (and it wasn't the Manual of Remote Sensing).
>And I wasn't even taking a class.

And then there is the excellent compendium by Maguire, Goodchild and Rhind,
which was 120 UK Pounds when I last checked (admittedly a year ago), which
makes it too expensive for some universities in the poorer parts of this
world, never mind for students or lecturers!

I would guess that we are in that vicious circle - the lower the demand
for a book, the higher the profit that has to be made on each copy,
which means that the book has to retail for a higher price, which means
that even less people can afford it, and so on ...

Antony

--
Antony Cooper                                        | Voice: +27 12 841 4121
acooper@nuustak.csir.co.za                           | Fax:   +27 12 841 3037
INFOTEK, CSIR, Box 395, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa | ICBM:   25 45S  28 16E
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
From: dmarble@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Duane F Marble)
Subject: Techical Support for MAP II (Mac)
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 20:17:38 GMT

When Dana Tomlin was with us, he installed a bunch of Macs in the
Natural Resources Lab which are running MAP II. I have a request from
some folks there for a technical support contact for that software.
Can someone give me a contact?

Thanks
-- 
Duane F. Marble			       E-mail: dmarble@magnus.acs.osu.edu
Department of Geography                Telephone: (614) 292-2250
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio 43210                   Fax: (614) 292-6213
From:  wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (Wm Randolph Franklin)
Subject:   Re: GIS and supercomputers
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Distribution: net
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 14:31:21 GMT

Supercomputers and parallel computers are often proposed when the
CPU load gets too large.  Often, a better solution would be better
algorithms.  There is no need for map overlay to take excessive
amounts of time, for instance.  In some organizations, it's easier
to get money for more hardware than money to hire a computer
scientist trained in proper programming, or to get money to train
the existing (non-computer) staff in algorithms and data
structures.

This is not particular to GIS, but universal, it seems.
Part of the problem is probably CS, not the other field.

At the current time, once you move to a supercomputer or a parallel
computer, you probably give up access to frills such as reasonable
operating systems and high-level languages.  If you don't need
real-time performance, but do need the processing power, consider a
group of fast workstations, of which at least 4 vendors offer a lot
of power.

-- 
---------------------
Wm. Randolph Franklin,  wrf@ecse.rpi.edu, (518) 276-6077;  Fax: -6261
ECSE Dept., 6026 JEC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst, Troy NY, 12180 USA

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Via: novmail; Wed, 18 Nov 92 17:57:27 GMT
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 17:54:45 GMT
From:         RICHARD2@BKMAIN.EAST-LONDON.AC.UK
Subject:      Re: Laurini & Thompson's Fundamentals of GIS?

Having followed the discussions regarding Laurini & Thompson's book:
Fundamentals of Spatial Information Systems, I have been surprised at
some of the comments made.

I use the book as a core reference for a 2nd Year module in
Information Systems as part of our 3 year BSc (Hons) course in
Geographical and Land Information Management.

In particular I find it useful for exactly the reasons that I seems
others do not. That is that the approach made in the book is from a
technical 'Data Centred' point of view, not an applications view
point.

This fits in with the philosophy that we adopt here: That to fully
understand & develop effective GIS, demands a fundamental
understanding of the nature of different types of data & information
and importantly of the way that they are manipulated within different
GIS. Such an understanding seems to me to be in itself one of the
'fundamentals' of GIS, which is necessary long before a student can
properly approach the development of different applications.

One recalls the discussions on GIS-L earlier this year related to
Scale & data accuracy within a GIS, and some of the fundamentally
misleading assumptions that were made in this respect. One wonders
whether perhaps a stronger grounding in the technical aspects of data
handling & the effects of data manipulation might have helped to avoid
some of these problems.

The students that I teach have had a 1 year module during their first
year in very basic information technology and computer usage along
with core modules in Surveying & Mapping. These students have few
problems in understanding  the technical nature of Laurini & Thompson.

The sections within the book discussing the handling of Vector data;
Relational Data Bases; And Data Modelling are particularly valuable.

One critisism I would make of the book, is that of perhaps using
rather convoluted english, which on occasion sometimes makes
relatively simple concepts overly complicated.

On the whole though I was very refreshed on reading the book when it
was first published, that at long last somebody had approached the
technical problems of handling spatial data, rather than simply
the applications of GIS.


With Regards

Richard Latham


=====================================================================
From:   Richard Latham

Email:  a36rjl@UK.AC.EAST-LONDON.SOL1
or:     Richard2@UK.AC.EAST-LONDON.Bkmain

        Department of Land Surveying,            Phone: 081 590 7722
        University of East London,                      ext 2549
        Longbridge Road, Dagenham,                 Fax: 081 849 3618
        Essex,  RM8 2AS  United Kingdom.
=====================================================================
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Via: uk.ac.york.vaxa; Tue, 17 Nov 1992 07:53:18 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 07:50:00 GMT
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         Peter Halls <PJH1@VAXA.YORK.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: Pricing of digital map products

Darius questions the charging basis of the UK OS.  It is, essentially, based
on a 'tile' which has a given area (wherever in the country you are) for any
specific scale.  For example, 1 :1250 - 500sm; 1: 2500 - 500sm, 1 : 10000 5skm,
but charged per sq km so the actual cost per tile is 25 times for a given tile!
1 : 50000 (raster scan of printed map) gets you a tile of side 20km ...
(sorry, for sm & skm above read 'side m, or km' !).

Thus to obtain the 1 : 50000 data for even a modest 'real' area requires a
significant number of 'tiles'.

Hoping that this answers Darius' question ...


Peter Halls
University of York.
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Date:         Sun, 15 Nov 1992 15:52:26 -0500
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         "(Pip Forer)" <pip@GEOG.CANTERBURY.AC.NZ>
Subject:      Re: Pricing of digital map products

The whole issue of marketing spatial data seems to be a bit of a black hole, at
 least in New Zealand. Here our main 'public sector' data suppliers are being
 pressed towards what are, by international standards, very high cost recovery
 ratios. The result is that their charges are significant. Most agencies here
 recognise a hirearchy of users with ability to pay, and are attempting to
 create a hierarchical market in terms of charges, using customised contracts as
 a tool. The education sector is *generally* well treated in this area *for
 specific requests*, i.e. data for a study area for certain themes for teaching
 will often be supplied at transfer cost subject to no commercial use
 eventuating. However, this doesn't easily translate into a broader support
 structure of information for browsing and general research-oriented teaching.

Suppliers are also into leasing data, with a minimum five years lease ,
 basically because they see government agencies with core data requirements as
 their key markets. Of course, this creates p[roblems for a 6 week research
 contract.

Example costs .. a CD-ROM of the meshblocks of NZ ( smallest published census
 unit, about 120 people in size ) with simple tabulation and display package
 leases for about NZ$15,000 over 5 years ( NZ$ was 52 US cents last night)

There are some signs that the available contracts for data supply are evolving
 into saner and more liberal forms. The whole approach however has a number of
 other worries apart from cost. One is the lack of clarity of rights to derived
 products and on-use of data. The other is public right of use, especially for
 census data which is inevitably a monopoly with no alternative source (unlike
 much other data which simply requires a rival producer).

The general impact of the situation here seems to be that the attempts to
 commodify 'public' data do generate a cash flow but also depress radical and
 progressive use of the data.... including suppressing new economic developments
 based on liberal use of data. Does anyone out there know of any reports on the
 indirect costs of cost recovery or whether there are any significant government
 reports in this area?

  Pip Forer

Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 10:03:11 CST
              <GIS-L@UBVM.BITNET>
From:         "W. Fredrick Limp" <fred@KIRK.UARK.EDU>
Subject:      Info on DIGITAL Potential Natural Veg Map

  We would like information on the availabity of a DIGITAL version of
  the Potential Natural Vegetation and Surficial Geology maps in the USGS
  National Atlas
  OR
  an equivalent.  We have been able to track down a digital forest cover map
  from this atlas and, of course, the various AVHRR data sets from EROS
  but have not been able to locate these two maps.  If they are unavailable
  we will scan and digitize from the photo base but really don't want
  to duplicate.

 W. Fredrick Limp,   Director                     FAX: (501) 575-3846
 CAST, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies   TEL: (501) 575-6159
 12 Ozark Hall, University of Arkansas
 Fayetteville AR 72701                             fred@kirk.uark.edu
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Fri, 20 Nov 1992 10:54:49 MET
From:         kosko <KUKO@CSPUNI12.BITNET>
Subject:      LOWTRAN

Hello ,

( I am just using a mailbox of friend of mine P. Sincak)

CAn anybody help me with adress where can I buy LOWTRAN software package
- as far as I know it is aprx. 250 USD.

Any info would be nice.
Sincerely

Marcel Kosko
University of Kosice
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
From: xor@clotho.acm.rpi.edu (Joe Schwartz)
Subject: Re:      Re: PC dBase mapping software
Organization: The Voice of Fate
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 08:44:39 GMT

In article <9211181627.AA26348@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Mutahar Hickey <mhick@BSU-CS.BSU.EDU> writes:
>M:
>M:Jeff Kopmanis (jeffk@grex.ann-arbor.mi.us)writes:
>M:MapInfo is also a competent low-end package.
>  They get their maps from GDT and their labelling
>M:features are pretty nice.
>M:
>I spoke to a representative of MapInfo yesterday on the phone.  I asked
>him what was the provenance of the map db's which they sell at $995 per state
>and was told that they were taken from Tiger files.  I mentioned that
>urban data in Tiger files was not always accurate.  The representative
>agreed and then I asked him:  Do you make any attempt to verify whether
>the resultant map is accurate?  The answer was no.

We get our data from a variety of sources.  Our StreetInfo maps are
from the TIGER data.  I'm pretty sure our ZIP code maps are from GDT.
Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to verify this data, other
than looking for gross errors (like missing cities).

If you notice errors in our data, it can't hurt to fax a description
to our tech support department.  In the case of TIGER data, there isn't
much we can do to improve it.  But for other sources, like GDT, we can
report inaccuracies back to them for future correction.

It also helps to describe how you're using the maps, and which errors
are most important to you.  For instance, is it more important that the
street corners be positionally accurate, or are you more concerned that
the street names and address ranges be correct?

Thanks for your comments.
-- 
Joe Schwartz       E-mail: xor@acm.rpi.edu
MapInfo Corp.
200 Broadway       Disclaimer: "Everything I know is wrong."
Troy, NY 12180     Corollary:  "Nothing I say represents MapInfo Corp."
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Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 10:33:43 PST
From:         Andy Bouffard <esri!england!andyb@UUNET.UU.NET>
Subject:      AutoCAD question

Pardon the interruption,

Can anyone tell me what happened to the AutoCAD discussion list
coming out of OSU?  We haven't received any mail from it in at
least a month.

Thanks in advance.

--Andy

____________________________________________________________________

Andy Bouffard                               abouffard@esri.com
Research and Development                    (909) 793-2853 : voice
ESRI - Redlands                             (909) 793-5953 : fax
380 New York St.
Redlands, CA 92373                          Opinions are my own.
____________________________________________________________________