[GRASS-dev] GRASS 6.4.1 RC1 released

GRASS GRASS developer
1

A first release candidate of GRASS 6.4.1 is now available.

Source code:
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.1RC1.tar.gz

Windows Binaries:
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/binary/mswindows/native/WinGRASS-6.4.1RC1-1-Setup.exe

More binaries will become available shortly.

To get the RC1 source code from SVN:
svn checkout http://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20110103_grass_6_4_1RC1

An announcement has been drafted at
http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.4.1RC1-News

All RC news will be merged into the final announcement later.

Since the 6.4.0 release in September 2010 almost 390 source code
modifications have been made to the 6.4.x release branch. Key
improvements of the GRASS 6.4.1 release include enhanced
portability for MS-Windows (native support), fixes for the new
wxPython based portable graphical interface, and new functionality.

Release candidate management at
http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass6Planning

Please join us in testing this release candidate for the final release.

Thanks to all contributors!

2

So far, everything works really well and the command line console is a huge help.

The only command that is giving me trouble (and I got lots of complaints about it from the students)
is d.legend as it has somewhat erratic behavior,
sometimes things work sometimes they don't depending on order how the options are given, for example:

- after accidentally running d.legend from command console which correctly gives error,
it gets stuck when trying to do it from GUI and you have to completely quit GRASS to get it working again
(see traceback below)

- once the legend is moved by hand part of the settings given by at= are ignored

- "use a subset" is ignored from GUI if user tries to change it after it was run already,
or it would respect the just max value but not the min value (this may be just user error
due to conflicting set of parameters)

- to address the two above issues perhaps a clean all parameters button for d.legend would be useful

- another issue is that it assigns smooth gradient to CELL map by default unless the individual cats are given
(e.g., for geology converted from vector, for landuse it works fine) - perhaps this is the desired behavior?

- a small wish: people have trouble finding how to resize the legend (and as I understand it, this cannot
be done by mouse) - perhaps using the following text in the GUI
" Placement and Size (in perc. of screen coordinates)" instead of just "Placement" would help the users.

Helena

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File
"/Users/Shared/src/GRASS/grass-6.4.1RC1-snow/dist.i386
-apple-darwin10.5.0/etc/wxpython/gui_modules/layertree.py",
line 218, in OnIdle

self.mapdisplay.MapWindow.UpdateMap(render=True)
  File
"/Users/Shared/src/GRASS/grass-6.4.1RC1-snow/dist.i386
-apple-
darwin10.5.0/etc/wxpython/gui_modules/mapdisp_window.py",
line 777, in UpdateMap

gcmd.GError(message = e)
  File
"/Users/Shared/src/GRASS/grass-6.4.1RC1-snow/dist.i386
-apple-darwin10.5.0/etc/wxpython/gui_modules/gcmd.py", line
76, in __init__

reason, exception),
TypeError
:
unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'GException' and
'unicode'

3

These are more questions or wishes than any real problems

- on Mac, when I switched to cairo in the GUI settings and tried to display vector layer GRASS completely freezes,
(I do have cairo framework installed), perhaps a bug in GUI specific to Mac? Michael, does this work for you?

Some minor questions that came up and I am not sure about:

- Is it possible to remove several map layers at once from GIS manager?
(I can highlight them but it removes only one, I assume the only way how to do it is to have them in a group and remove the group).

- am I right that d.barscale has no option to set its size ?
(I know it did not have it, but I get asked about it often so I want to make sure
  I haven't overlooked something)

- is it possible set the size of the browse window in preferences? Currently it shows
only 9 map layers at once (with hundreds in the mapset it is hard to find
the one that is wanted)

thanks

Helena

On Jan 4, 2011, at 8:41 AM, Markus Neteler wrote:

A first release candidate of GRASS 6.4.1 is now available.

Source code:
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/source/grass-6.4.1RC1.tar.gz

Windows Binaries:
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/binary/mswindows/native/WinGRASS-6.4.1RC1-1-Setup.exe

More binaries will become available shortly.

To get the RC1 source code from SVN:
svn checkout http://svn.osgeo.org/grass/grass/tags/release_20110103_grass_6_4_1RC1

An announcement has been drafted at
http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Release/6.4.1RC1-News

All RC news will be merged into the final announcement later.

Since the 6.4.0 release in September 2010 almost 390 source code
modifications have been made to the 6.4.x release branch. Key
improvements of the GRASS 6.4.1 release include enhanced
portability for MS-Windows (native support), fixes for the new
wxPython based portable graphical interface, and new functionality.

Release candidate management at
http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass6Planning

Please join us in testing this release candidate for the final release.

Thanks to all contributors!
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http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev

4

Hi, I am just online for the first time this week (year?) for
a few moments. Hopefully I'll get caught up by next week (month?).

Helena wrote:

So far, everything works really well
and the command line console is a huge help.

The only command that is giving me trouble (and I got lots
of complaints about it from the students)
is d.legend

[the interface from the GUI not CLI, right..?]

as it has somewhat erratic behavior,
sometimes things work sometimes they don't depending on
order how the options are given, for example:

[...]

I'll address the CLI (C module) issues,

- another issue is that it assigns smooth gradient to CELL
map by default unless the individual cats are given
(e.g., for geology converted from vector, for landuse it
works fine) - perhaps this is the desired behavior?

it swaps over to a smooth gradient automatically if the number
of individual cats to be displayed is more than the number of
vertical pixels available (more or less). this is desired
behavior and a warning is sent to stderr if it happens.
a quirk of it is that the legend is "flipped": categories
count from the top of the screen, FCELL ranges have max at the
top and min at the bottom. Use the flip flag if that isn't what
you want.

regards,
Hamish

5

Helena wrote:

- am I right that d.barscale has no option to set its size
?
(I know it did not have it, but I get asked about it often
so I want to make sure
I haven't overlooked something)

Yes, that is correct. It is set automatically from the width of the
current frame in map units. It should give you something nice;
does it not? that's a serious question, not trying to be
defensive about it- the rendering is pixel based so not much use
for the PostScript display driver, or d.out.file with 4x sizing
then reduced.

ps.map does give you the option to choose the length (in map units). it's a lot more work (and rather a pain..) but gives you
exactly what you ask for. I sort of see the d.* modules as quick
and dirty on-screen display, while ps.map as more catering to cartography which demands exactitude, so haven't been motivated
much to change either one.

Hamish