Customer Reviews

Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book "Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools" is an excellent resource for students and instructors in the field of GIS-- or the interested amateur cartographer. Most courses in spatial analysis and map-making are taught using expensive, proprietary software packages that are only available at universities or large consulting firms. Open source GIS software, while widely available, is not well known or used outside of a relatively small circle of power users. Getting up to speed on open source GIS applications used to require a tremendous time investment reading documentation, and asking questions on mailing lists or IRC. This time investment was a series limiting factor for many potential users of open source GIS software.

"Desktop GIS" fills this long-standing gap in the form of example-based and task-oriented documentation. The format of this book should appeal to a wide audience, as it can be used as a flip-through reference or can be read cover to cover for a more comprehensive overview. Already I have leant this book to colleagues seeking more information on QGIS, GRASS, and R integration. This book, and others like it will certainly empower interested users to answer spatial analysis questions and make beautiful maps- without being tied to expensive annual license costs.

Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools is a book I have already recommended to several people and organisations around the world who are starting out with GIS.

For anyone looking to explore or map data, from hobbyists to serious biologists, ecologists, etc, this book is the ideal introduction to GIS. It presents the underlying concepts of GIS in a chatty, easy to understand style, and introduces a range of freely available software tools which will enable virtually anyone to map or analyse their data, from beginners looking to plot data on a simple desktop map, to those who wish to carry out sophisticated spatial analyses, this book presents a range of solutions covering them all.

There is not much choice. If you want to use free GIS software and you are starting out, you'll pretty much need to buy this book to get an overview of the possibilities.
Not that it's perfect, the book is necessarily a little outdated now, since the versions of such software such as Quantum GIS are no longer version 0.9 but 1.02 for the stable version and 1.3 for the development version.
But heck it's not the bells and whistles that count, it's the overall picture so you know where to look.
This covers a lot of different FOSS GIS applications, like GRASS UDIG, QGIS,OpenJump and others, but it gives most attention to GGis and Grass, which is not surprising, given the author is the person who started QGis and it works with Grass.
I would have saved a month of time had I started with this book rather than pester people on forums.

It is a great book, with in introduction to a lot of OSGIS tools. But it used to have a retail price of $34.95. Now it is priced like a college textbook.

It is a 5 star book for the price I paid.

From Google Maps to iPhones and geographic systems at all levels, DESKTOP GIS shows how to create and utilize an open source GIS toolkit using strategies for choosing platforms, blending with other tools, and more. Chapters cover a range of GIS options, from using GDAL and OGR and analysis tools to PostGIS and other systems. Any collection strong in GIS systems in general and open source tools in particular needs
this.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I really enjoyed Gary's book - it really is the only one out there with this type of overview. If you think it's just about QGIS, Gary's specialty, you'd miss the advantage of this book. I am glad that Locate Press is able to publish a comprehensively updated reprint of Gary's popular, sold-out, book. It should be out later this summer (2011).