README for QGIS version 0.6 'Simon'

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is an Open Source Geographic Information System. The
project was born in May of 2002 and was established as a project on
SourceForge in June of the same year. We've worked hard to make GIS
software (which is traditionaly expensive commerical software) a viable
prospect for anyone with basic access to a Personal Computer.  QGIS
currently runs on most Unix platforms, Window, and OS X. QGIS is
developed using the Qt toolkit (http://www.trolltech.com) and C++.  This
means that QGIS feels snappy to use and has a pleasing, easy to use
graphical user interface. 

QGIS aims to be an easy to use GIS, providing common functions and
features. The initial goal was to provide a GIS data viewer. QGIS has
reached that point in its evolution and is being used by many for their
daily GIS data viewing needs. QGIS supports a number of raster and
vector data formats, with new support easily added using the plugin
architecture.

QGIS is released under the GNU Public License (GPL). Devloping QGIS
under this license means that you can (if you want to) inspect and
modify the source code and guarantees that you, our happy user will
always have access to a GIS program that is free of cost and can be
freely modified.

This release adds:
  * GEOS support in the OGR provider to refine selection of features
    via identify. This improves over the previous method of feature
    selection which used a simple MBR intersection check.
  * PostGIS editing support in provider
  * Vector dialog redesign to improve usability
  * Improvement in project handling (loading and saving)
  * Scale dependent rendering
  * User option to load layers with out drawing them, thus allowing
    you to set scale dependency, etc without waiting for the initial draw to
    complete
  * Interrupt drawing of features by hitting ESC
  * Attribute actions - the ability to run an external program based
    on the contents of an attribute field in a layer
  * Create new vector layer (shapefile) for editing
  * Windows installer
  * Mac OSX binary
  * New options in the graticule builder plugin
  * Enhancements to the GPS plugin
  * Man page
  * Save delimited text as shapefile
  * Improved Delimited Text plugin, including preview of text file
  * Improved SPIT handling of PostgreSQL reserved words and shapefiles
    with multiple geometry types
  * Display SQL query used to create a PostGIS layer
  * PostgreSQL query builder
  * Ability to redefine the query used for PostgreSQL layers from the
    layer properties dialog
  * North arrow, scalebar, and copyright plugins save their state in
    the project file
  * Datasets with UTF8, Kanjii and CJK filenames now load properly

Supported raster formats include:
  Grass
  USGS DEM
  ArcInfo binary grid
  ArcInfo ASCII grid
  ERDAS Imagine
  SDTS
  GeoTiff
  Tiff with world file

Supported vector formats include:
  ESRI Shapefiles
  PostgreSQL/PostGIS
  GRASS
  

NOTE -- Please follow the installation instructions carefully. 
After untarring the distribution, you can find the HTML version of the 
installation document in qgis/doc/index.html. The installation document is 
also available as PDF in the same directory or on the website at
http://qgis.org/docs/install.html.

HELP US --  Please submit bug reports using the QGIS bug tracker at:
            http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=55820&atid=478378
            When reporting a bug, either login to SourceForge or, if you don't
            have a SourceForge id, provide an email address where we can 
            request additional information.
  
            Please do not use the Bugs forum to report bugs.
  
SUPPORT -   You can get support in the following ways:
            1.  Using the QGIS community site at http://community.qgis.org
            2.  Joining the qgis-users mailing list at:
                http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/qgis-user
            3.  Using IRC by joining the #qgis channel on irc.freenode.net. 
                Please wait around for a response to your question as many 
                folks on the channel are doing other things and it may take a 
                while for them to notice your question.