[GRASS-dev] future of thematic mapping in GRASS

On Jan 9, 2015, at 3:51 AM, grass-dev-request@lists.osgeo.org wrote:

From: Moritz Lennert <mlennert@club.worldonline.be>

To: grass-dev <grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org>

Date: January 9, 2015 at 2:59:08 AM MST

Subject: [GRASS-dev] future of thematic mapping in GRASS

Using the occasion of #2522 [1] (BTW I agree with these changes), I would like to launch a discussion on the future of thematic mapping in GRASS (post grass7). I think we need a general discussion about what exactly is still needed. Several elements were included directly into d.vect (variable size of symbols and widths of lines, width-, size- and rgb-column). I actually think that maybe a more efficient approach in the long run might be to use these elements for thematic mapping of vectors. Something like this:

  • use v.class to define classes; extend to allow writing class attribution to attribute table
  • use an extended v.colors or a new v.colors.classes to define colors for classes, possibly using [2]
  • use d.vect to display all of this
  • use a new d.legend.vector to display legend info (including class frequencies).

Python scripts could be used to bind these modules together.

What do you think ?

Moritz

[1] http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2522
[2] http://colorbrewer2.org/

I agree that we should do something like this. I always thought of d.vect.thematic as a temporary solution until better integrated thematic mapping could be implemented.

Michael


C. Michael Barton
Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Head, Graduate Faculty in Complex Adaptive Systems Science
Arizona State University

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