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News
Whitebox GAT (version 2.0) is now available for download.
Enjoy! (12/04/2012)
Whitebox is now truly multi-platform, running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and
any other platform with a JVM.
Prof. John Lindsay is currently looking for potential graduate students (Masters) to join his research programme at the University of Guelph. Interested individuals are encouraged to contact him. (18/04/2012)
| Whitebox Geospatial Analysis Tools
Whitebox GAT 2.0 is here!
Many of you have been asking when a new version of Whitebox would be released.
Well we've been very busy working on it, and now we're are excited to announce that the new version of Whitebox GAT has
finally arrived. You can download the program and source code here. Whitebox has
been completely re-written. The main reason for this was to allow Whitebox to
be truly multi-platform, running equally well on MS Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. This has been a major undertaking and
as such there are still a few tools and features from Whitebox 1.0.7 that need to be translated over to the
new version. We are looking for volunteers to help with the work yet to be done
(including working on the help documentation, testing and reporting bugs). Whitebox is now written using Java,
the world's most popular multi-platform programming language. There have also been many additions to
version 2.0, including support for displaying vector ShapeFiles, plenty of new tools, and an
improved user interface. As always, we welcome any feedback to help improve
the software. Please contact Prof. John Lindsay with any comments.
About the Whitebox GAT Project
The Whitebox GAT project is an exciting open-source GIS project. Whitbox is as much a philosophical approach to geomatics as it is a GIS/Remote Sensing package. This philosophy of transparency, from which Whitebox derives its name, has led to the development of some rather unique and innovative features in the software. To learn more about this philosophy of transparent GIS/RS, please follow this link.
Whitebox GAT has its origins embedded in an older freeware GIS/RS software, the Terrain Analysis System (TAS). Whitebox offers some real improvements over this older software. This includes the following:
1. Whitebox is open-source
and transparent software. The concept of software transparency that has guided the development of Whitebox
is a very novel contribution and improvement over traditional open-source development strategies that we hope
will encourage an active development community. Imagine using a GIS for a specific application or teaching.
You may use a certain tool and wonder, 'how exactly does this work?' You might first try the help
documentation, but it may not be detailed enough (i.e. down to the level of the implemented algorithm) to
give you the information you desire. Now image that you could press a single button that is on the tool's
dialog box and it would bring you to the very page in the enormous library of the GIS packages code that is
the tool's algorithm. That's exactly what transparent software is all about.
2. Whitebox possesses a new process for accessing spatial data that allows for the processing of much larger (massive) spatial datasets.
3. Whitbox is extendible. Users are able to create and embed custom tools that take advantage of the Whitebox user-interface and functionality to the same degree of integration as built-in functions. It is possible to write plugins using either the Java programming langauge or to write scripts
using either jython (Python for Java), JavaScript, or Groovy.
4. Whitebox has very good documentation. Each tool has rich documentation built into the tool dialog box and the software has an excellent help program. The help for each tool also documents who wrote the help and the tool algorithm and when. This is also part of Whitebox's transparent philosophy. The user has a right to know who created the tool.
5. Whitebox is easy to use, despite being a powerful software package for performing advanced geospatial analysis operations. This fact, combined with the rich help documentation and the ability to easily drill down into the workings of each tool's algorithm, makes Whitebox ideal for education as well as research.
John Lindsay
Department of Geography
University of Guelph
(19/04/2012) |
