Creating Data - Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools - page 117

Figure 8.3: Earthquakes rendered in QGIS by magnitude

As you can see, it's relatively easy to import text data into QGIS or
GRASS. Our examples dealt only with importing points. As I said ear-
lier, GRASS supports importing all feature types in “standard” mode.
See the manual page ( g.manual v.in.ascii ) for details and examples on
importing types other than points.

8.3 Converting Data

Sometimes we are faced with converting data before we can use it, sim-
ply because it's not in the format that works with our software. You
can probably think of other reasons as well; for example, you want to
share the data with someone using another type of software. Or per-
haps you might want to transform the data to another projection to
make it play nicely with your other data. You might recall we talked a
bit about standardizing your data format in Chapter 6 , Data Formats,
on page 91 .