[GRASS-dev] gis.m notes

GRASS GIS GRASS GIS developer
1

Hi,

I had some courses with GRASS newbies and so I had opportunity to
observe them and see, what kind of trouble they are having with gis.m
and GRASS modules.

First I have to say, that nobody seemed to have real problems using
gis.m and get her/his map or perform some data analysis on it, so: great
work Michael and others!

The major problem was, that the users expected, that the icon in
list of layers for current map display is active, so one can click on it and NOT the
text (e.g. raster1). Even
when the people knew allready, that they have to click on the text and
not on the icon, firstly they tryed to click on the icon, which did not
work. Would it be possible to make the icon active too?

Second thing, if they start new map-display, their list of layers
disappeared and they did not know, that the list of layers is somehow
coresponding with (current) mapwindow. Maybe, it would be cool to add kind of
tabs for each running display, so you would switch between map displays
not only by clicking on them, but also in gis.m window just like e.g.
firefox does.

It would be cool, if the mapwindow would redraw after new map is added
to list of layers (just like arcgis does it) or if there would be some
kind of switch for doing this.

And last thing, maybe I found some bug in new georectifier: mapset seems
to be changed to source mapset (xy) after some conditions and GRASS has to be restarted. We
reproduced this bug on 3 computers, but I did not have time to mark the
steps, which are leading to this. I'll post some details in the future.
I'm just writing this for the case, anybody else noticed this "feature".

But as I said, it was great to see new people, who are able "just to
work" with GRASS using the new GUI manager. Thanks a lot for your work!

Jachym
--
Jachym Cepicky
e-mail: jachym.cepicky@centrum.cz
URL: http://les-ejk.cz
GPG: http://www.les-ejk.cz/pgp/jachym_cepicky-gpg.pub
-----------------------------------------
OFFICE:
Department of Geoinformation Technologies
Zemedelska 3
613 00, Brno
Czech Republick
e-mail: xcepicky@node.mendelu.cz
URL: http://mapserver.mendelu.cz
Tel.: +420 545 134 514

2

On 12/6/06 2:01 PM, "Jachym Cepicky" <jachym.cepicky@centrum.cz> wrote:

Jachym,

Thanks for the feedback. Here are a couple of quick responses. Maybe more
with some thought.

Hi,

I had some courses with GRASS newbies and so I had opportunity to
observe them and see, what kind of trouble they are having with gis.m
and GRASS modules.

First I have to say, that nobody seemed to have real problems using
gis.m and get her/his map or perform some data analysis on it, so: great
work Michael and others!

Thanks. I'm glad to see that it is helping people be productive in GRASS.

The major problem was, that the users expected, that the icon in
list of layers for current map display is active, so one can click on it and
NOT the
text (e.g. raster1). Even
when the people knew allready, that they have to click on the text and
not on the icon, firstly they tryed to click on the icon, which did not
work. Would it be possible to make the icon active too?

This is a good idea. I don't know how hard it is to implement, but I'll see
what I can do.

Second thing, if they start new map-display, their list of layers
disappeared and they did not know, that the list of layers is somehow
coresponding with (current) mapwindow. Maybe, it would be cool to add kind of
tabs for each running display, so you would switch between map displays
not only by clicking on them, but also in gis.m window just like e.g.
firefox does.

It would be nice to have some kind of visual indication that you've got a
clean slate for each new display but any existing ones are still around. I
tried to do as you suggest and was unsuccessful. I ran into underlying
programmatic issues (or lack of ability). There is a notebook widget in
bwidgets, but I couldn't get it to work correctly in this way automatically
with switching displays. On the pragmatic side, the GIS Manager window is
pretty small and might run out of room with more than a few displays open.
On the other hand, maybe no one would want to open more than a few displays
simultaneously.

It would be cool, if the mapwindow would redraw after new map is added
to list of layers (just like arcgis does it) or if there would be some
kind of switch for doing this.

I suggested this on the list and the majority opinion was to do the redraw
manually so people wouldn't have to wait for each change or addition to
update the display.

And last thing, maybe I found some bug in new georectifier: mapset seems
to be changed to source mapset (xy) after some conditions and GRASS has to be
restarted. We
reproduced this bug on 3 computers, but I did not have time to mark the
steps, which are leading to this. I'll post some details in the future.
I'm just writing this for the case, anybody else noticed this "feature".

In order to work correctly, the georectifier has to switch back and forth
between the xy location and the 'working' location. It *should* do this
seamlessly. I've run into problems when there is some kind of crash while it
is operating in the xy location. I've tried to trap all the possibilities
for this I've found. However, if you can document a place this is
consistently a problem, I'll try to trap it too.

But as I said, it was great to see new people, who are able "just to
work" with GRASS using the new GUI manager. Thanks a lot for your work!

Jachym

Thanks.
Michael

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton

3

Jachym Cepicky wrote:

I had some courses with GRASS newbies and so I had opportunity to
observe them and see, what kind of trouble they are having with gis.m
and GRASS modules.

was this with 6.2.0 or 6.3-cvs? (just wondering what's getting tested)

Second thing, if they start new map-display, their list of layers
disappeared and they did not know, that the list of layers is somehow
coresponding with (current) mapwindow. Maybe, it would be cool to add
kind of tabs for each running display, so you would switch between map
displays not only by clicking on them, but also in gis.m window just
like e.g. firefox does.

I have suggested in the past, I found it a bit confusing too. If tabs
are too hard, at minimum there could be a line of underlined text at the
top of the command list which says "Map Display $n command list:" or
something like that.

Hamish

4

Michael Barton wrote:

It would be nice to have some kind of visual indication that you've
got a clean slate for each new display but any existing ones are still
around. I tried to do as you suggest and was unsuccessful. I ran into
underlying programmatic issues (or lack of ability). There is a
notebook widget in bwidgets, but I couldn't get it to work correctly
in this way automatically with switching displays. On the pragmatic
side, the GIS Manager window is pretty small and might run out of room
with more than a few displays open. On the other hand, maybe no one
would want to open more than a few displays simultaneously.

doesn't help with automatically switching tabs, but see g.region GUI for
tab code.

I don't think we are too short on vertical space, so a fontsize=10 bold
title at the top of the list wouldn't take too much space. I never have
more than 3-4 maps in the list at one time. (but I do complicated map
making from the command line..)

> It would be cool, if the mapwindow would redraw after new map is
> added to list of layers (just like arcgis does it) or if there would
> be some kind of switch for doing this.

I suggested this on the list and the majority opinion was to do the
redraw manually so people wouldn't have to wait for each change or
addition to update the display.

maybe add a checkbox for this? (default off)
it'll be slower...

Hamish

5

hi,
On Thu, Dec 07, 2006 at 06:33:49PM +1300, Hamish wrote:

Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> I had some courses with GRASS newbies and so I had opportunity to
> observe them and see, what kind of trouble they are having with gis.m
> and GRASS modules.

was this with 6.2.0 or 6.3-cvs? (just wondering what's getting tested)

it was about 3 weeks old version of 6.3

> Second thing, if they start new map-display, their list of layers
> disappeared and they did not know, that the list of layers is somehow
> coresponding with (current) mapwindow. Maybe, it would be cool to add
> kind of tabs for each running display, so you would switch between map
> displays not only by clicking on them, but also in gis.m window just
> like e.g. firefox does.

I have suggested in the past, I found it a bit confusing too. If tabs
are too hard, at minimum there could be a line of underlined text at the
top of the command list which says "Map Display $n command list:" or
something like that.

Hamish

Jachym

--
Jachym Cepicky
e-mail: jachym.cepicky@centrum.cz
URL: http://les-ejk.cz
GPG: http://www.les-ejk.cz/pgp/jachym_cepicky-gpg.pub
-----------------------------------------
OFFICE:
Department of Geoinformation Technologies
Zemedelska 3
613 00, Brno
Czech Republick
e-mail: xcepicky@node.mendelu.cz
URL: http://mapserver.mendelu.cz
Tel.: +420 545 134 514

6

On 12/6/06 10:33 PM, "Hamish" <hamish_nospam@yahoo.com> wrote:

are too hard, at minimum there could be a line of underlined text at the
top of the command list which says "Map Display $n command list:" or
something like that.

I'm pretty sure that this is easy to do.

Michael
__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton