[GRASS-dev] GRASS 7: r.shaded.relief changed name?

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module. r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter? local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

best

Carlos

···

Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.

Hi Carlos,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module.

I did the rename after discussion with Michael Barton and Markus Neteler. We’ve tried to consider different names for several modules and picked the ones which seemed less confusing. See the discussion:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2014-November/071904.html
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Re-GRASS-SVN-r62845-in-grass-trunk-scripts-d-shadedmap-r-shadedmap-td5174184.html

r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter?

I’m afraid that in case of these modules, basically anything can be confusing. Let us know what do you think after reading the discussion, so we have some more feedback.

local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

BTW, there is r.local.relief in addons.

Vaclav

best

Carlos


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev

I agree with Carlos on this , I think r.shaded.relief was pretty clear what it was doing. As I learned recently, r.relief indeed can be confused with any of the numerous relief metrics.

Helena

On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Carlos,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Carlos Grohmann carlos.grohmann@gmail.com wrote:

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module.

I did the rename after discussion with Michael Barton and Markus Neteler. We’ve tried to consider different names for several modules and picked the ones which seemed less confusing. See the discussion:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2014-November/071904.html
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Re-GRASS-SVN-r62845-in-grass-trunk-scripts-d-shadedmap-r-shadedmap-td5174184.html

r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter?

I’m afraid that in case of these modules, basically anything can be confusing. Let us know what do you think after reading the discussion, so we have some more feedback.

local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

BTW, there is r.local.relief in addons.

Vaclav

best

Carlos


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev

Helena Mitasova

Associate Professor
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
1125 Jordan Hall
NCSU Box 8208
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hmitaso/
http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/

email: hmitaso@ncsu.edu
ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
fax 919 515-7802

That was an interesting discussion, I’m sorry I missed it (should pay more attention…)

I think that modules names should be descriptive. When I started learning GRASS (and GIS), back in my Masters, I knew what r.shaded.relief would do. I wouldn’t be sure in the case of r.relief or r.shade.
If we have r.local.relief in the addons, it’s great but a new user might not know about this, so the name still can cause confusion.

Making the names shorter doesn’t necessarily make them better, IMO.

I’d say r.shaded.relief should stay as it was.

As for r.shade, I’d go with something like r.drape.shade or r.shade.drape (because that’s what it is doing) or r.shade.mapping (but this could be confusing as well - is it mapping the shades?..)

cheers

Carlos

···

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Helena Mitasova <hmitaso@ncsu.edu> wrote:

I agree with Carlos on this , I think r.shaded.relief was pretty clear what it was doing. As I learned recently, r.relief indeed can be confused with any of the numerous relief metrics.

Helena

On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Carlos,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Carlos Grohmann carlos.grohmann@gmail.com wrote:

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module.

I did the rename after discussion with Michael Barton and Markus Neteler. We’ve tried to consider different names for several modules and picked the ones which seemed less confusing. See the discussion:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2014-November/071904.html
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Re-GRASS-SVN-r62845-in-grass-trunk-scripts-d-shadedmap-r-shadedmap-td5174184.html

r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter?

I’m afraid that in case of these modules, basically anything can be confusing. Let us know what do you think after reading the discussion, so we have some more feedback.

local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

BTW, there is r.local.relief in addons.

Vaclav

best

Carlos


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev

Helena Mitasova

Associate Professor
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
1125 Jordan Hall
NCSU Box 8208
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hmitaso/
http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/

email: hmitaso@ncsu.edu
ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
fax 919 515-7802

Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

That was an interesting discussion, I’m sorry I missed it (should pay more attention…)

I think that modules names should be descriptive. When I started learning GRASS (and GIS), back in my Masters, I knew what r.shaded.relief would do. I wouldn’t be sure in the case of r.relief or r.shade.
If we have r.local.relief in the addons, it’s great but a new user might not know about this, so the name still can cause confusion.

Making the names shorter doesn’t necessarily make them better, IMO.

I’d say r.shaded.relief should stay as it was.

As for r.shade, I’d go with something like r.drape.shade or r.shade.drape (because that’s what it is doing) or r.shade.mapping (but this could be confusing as well - is it mapping the shades?..)

Thanks for the comments, Carlos. I think the desire to have short names was definitively involved in the decision. Although they might be less readable they have different advantages. According to it’s name I might see r.shaded.relief as something which shades the relief (r.relief+r.shade) but it just creates the shade from relief (r.relief). Also, r.relief, although not self-explanatory, does not invoke any association with relief metrics or relief-related parameters because I’m not familiar with these terms (also Google and Wikipedia seems to be quite ignorant about them).

In any case, I should emphasize that although this is an important feedback, the discussion already happened and now it would be impossible or at least very hard to change it since we have already released 7.0.0.

Vaclav

cheers

Carlos

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Helena Mitasova <hmitaso@ncsu.edu> wrote:

I agree with Carlos on this , I think r.shaded.relief was pretty clear what it was doing. As I learned recently, r.relief indeed can be confused with any of the numerous relief metrics.

Helena

On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Carlos,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module.

I did the rename after discussion with Michael Barton and Markus Neteler. We’ve tried to consider different names for several modules and picked the ones which seemed less confusing. See the discussion:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2014-November/071904.html
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Re-GRASS-SVN-r62845-in-grass-trunk-scripts-d-shadedmap-r-shadedmap-td5174184.html

r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter?

I’m afraid that in case of these modules, basically anything can be confusing. Let us know what do you think after reading the discussion, so we have some more feedback.

local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

BTW, there is r.local.relief in addons.

Vaclav

best

Carlos


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev


Helena Mitasova
Associate Professor
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
1125 Jordan Hall
NCSU Box 8208
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hmitaso/
http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/

email: hmitaso@ncsu.edu
ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
fax 919 515-7802


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.

Well, maybe we can think on this again in the near future?..

I always think on my students and in people coming from the ArcGIS world… If I were just beginning in GRASS, looking at the modules’ names, I would definitely think that relief shading would be done with r.shade, not r.relief (which would give me the impression that it something related to a morphometric parameter - but that may be because I do work with geomorphometry…).

Anyway, the menus descriptions are good and clear. It’s just going to be a bit hard to get used to the new names after all these years…

best

···

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 11:25 AM, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

That was an interesting discussion, I’m sorry I missed it (should pay more attention…)

I think that modules names should be descriptive. When I started learning GRASS (and GIS), back in my Masters, I knew what r.shaded.relief would do. I wouldn’t be sure in the case of r.relief or r.shade.
If we have r.local.relief in the addons, it’s great but a new user might not know about this, so the name still can cause confusion.

Making the names shorter doesn’t necessarily make them better, IMO.

I’d say r.shaded.relief should stay as it was.

As for r.shade, I’d go with something like r.drape.shade or r.shade.drape (because that’s what it is doing) or r.shade.mapping (but this could be confusing as well - is it mapping the shades?..)

Thanks for the comments, Carlos. I think the desire to have short names was definitively involved in the decision. Although they might be less readable they have different advantages. According to it’s name I might see r.shaded.relief as something which shades the relief (r.relief+r.shade) but it just creates the shade from relief (r.relief). Also, r.relief, although not self-explanatory, does not invoke any association with relief metrics or relief-related parameters because I’m not familiar with these terms (also Google and Wikipedia seems to be quite ignorant about them).

In any case, I should emphasize that although this is an important feedback, the discussion already happened and now it would be impossible or at least very hard to change it since we have already released 7.0.0.

Vaclav

cheers

Carlos

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Helena Mitasova <hmitaso@ncsu.edu> wrote:

I agree with Carlos on this , I think r.shaded.relief was pretty clear what it was doing. As I learned recently, r.relief indeed can be confused with any of the numerous relief metrics.

Helena

On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Carlos,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module.

I did the rename after discussion with Michael Barton and Markus Neteler. We’ve tried to consider different names for several modules and picked the ones which seemed less confusing. See the discussion:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2014-November/071904.html
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Re-GRASS-SVN-r62845-in-grass-trunk-scripts-d-shadedmap-r-shadedmap-td5174184.html

r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter?

I’m afraid that in case of these modules, basically anything can be confusing. Let us know what do you think after reading the discussion, so we have some more feedback.

local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

BTW, there is r.local.relief in addons.

Vaclav

best

Carlos


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev


Helena Mitasova
Associate Professor
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
1125 Jordan Hall
NCSU Box 8208
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hmitaso/
http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/

email: hmitaso@ncsu.edu
ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
fax 919 515-7802


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.

Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, maybe we can think on this again in the near future?..

The issue is that we must keep API compatible in major version following semantic versioning (http://semver.org/). We can rename items in the menu (GUI) but not rename module (CLI and API) for 7 series. We can add new modules but having synonyms for modules might cause confusion. However, the situation now is a little bit special: 7.0.0 is first in the series and it was not fully adopted yet, so backwards compatibility within 7 series is not such an issue. However, we would have to be really sure we are doing the right thing.

I always think on my students and in people coming from the ArcGIS world… If I were just beginning in GRASS, looking at the modules’ names, I would definitely think that relief shading would be done with r.shade, not r.relief (which would give me the impression that it something related to a morphometric parameter - but that may be because I do work with geomorphometry…).

Perhaps the basic descriptions in manual could be improved to direct you between r.relief and r|d.shade in case you find one and not the other.

Anyway, the menus descriptions are good and clear. It’s just going to be a bit hard to get used to the new names after all these years…

Backwards compatibility between series (i.e. 7 with 6) is valuable but sometimes we must change in order to accommodate new features or have consistency (in this case, considering other related modules from the previous discussion).

best

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 11:25 AM, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

That was an interesting discussion, I’m sorry I missed it (should pay more attention…)

I think that modules names should be descriptive. When I started learning GRASS (and GIS), back in my Masters, I knew what r.shaded.relief would do. I wouldn’t be sure in the case of r.relief or r.shade.
If we have r.local.relief in the addons, it’s great but a new user might not know about this, so the name still can cause confusion.

Making the names shorter doesn’t necessarily make them better, IMO.

I’d say r.shaded.relief should stay as it was.

As for r.shade, I’d go with something like r.drape.shade or r.shade.drape (because that’s what it is doing) or r.shade.mapping (but this could be confusing as well - is it mapping the shades?..)

Thanks for the comments, Carlos. I think the desire to have short names was definitively involved in the decision. Although they might be less readable they have different advantages. According to it’s name I might see r.shaded.relief as something which shades the relief (r.relief+r.shade) but it just creates the shade from relief (r.relief). Also, r.relief, although not self-explanatory, does not invoke any association with relief metrics or relief-related parameters because I’m not familiar with these terms (also Google and Wikipedia seems to be quite ignorant about them).

In any case, I should emphasize that although this is an important feedback, the discussion already happened and now it would be impossible or at least very hard to change it since we have already released 7.0.0.

Vaclav

cheers

Carlos

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:06 AM, Helena Mitasova <hmitaso@ncsu.edu> wrote:

I agree with Carlos on this , I think r.shaded.relief was pretty clear what it was doing. As I learned recently, r.relief indeed can be confused with any of the numerous relief metrics.

Helena

On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Carlos,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

I just installed the latest pkg for GRASS 7 on OSX (nice splash screen BTW)
and r.shaded.relief is now just r.relief

Is it too much if ask why this change? To me, r.shaded.relief is so much better, it describes the module.

I did the rename after discussion with Michael Barton and Markus Neteler. We’ve tried to consider different names for several modules and picked the ones which seemed less confusing. See the discussion:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2014-November/071904.html
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Re-GRASS-SVN-r62845-in-grass-trunk-scripts-d-shadedmap-r-shadedmap-td5174184.html

r.relief might be confusing (is it to calculate some rellief-related parameter?

I’m afraid that in case of these modules, basically anything can be confusing. Let us know what do you think after reading the discussion, so we have some more feedback.

local relief? other morphometric parameter?).

BTW, there is r.local.relief in addons.

Vaclav

best

Carlos


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev


Helena Mitasova
Associate Professor
Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
1125 Jordan Hall
NCSU Box 8208
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~hmitaso/
http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/

email: hmitaso@ncsu.edu
ph: 919-513-1327 (no voicemail)
fax 919 515-7802


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.


Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann
Institute of Energy and Environment - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil

  • Digital Terrain Analysis | GIS | Remote Sensing -

http://carlosgrohmann.com
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-5572


Can’t stop the signal.

On 23/04/15 16:25, Vaclav Petras wrote:

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Carlos Grohmann
<carlos.grohmann@gmail.com <mailto:carlos.grohmann@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> That was an interesting discussion, I'm sorry I missed it (should pay
more attention...)
>
> I think that modules names should be descriptive. When I started
learning GRASS (and GIS), back in my Masters, I knew what
r.shaded.relief would do. I wouldn't be sure in the case of r.relief or
r.shade.
> If we have r.local.relief in the addons, it's great but a new user
might not know about this, so the name still can cause confusion.
>
> Making the names shorter doesn't necessarily make them better, IMO.
>
> I'd say r.shaded.relief should stay as it was.
>
> As for r.shade, I'd go with something like r.drape.shade or
r.shade.drape (because that's what it is doing) or r.shade.mapping (but
this could be confusing as well - is it mapping the shades?..)

Thanks for the comments, Carlos. I think the desire to have short names
was definitively involved in the decision. Although they might be less
readable they have different advantages. According to it's name I might
see r.shaded.relief as something which shades the relief
(r.relief+r.shade) but it just creates the shade from relief (r.relief).
Also, r.relief, although not self-explanatory, does not invoke any
association with relief metrics or relief-related parameters because I'm
not familiar with these terms (also Google and Wikipedia seems to be
quite ignorant about them).

In any case, I should emphasize that although this is an important
feedback, the discussion already happened and now it would be impossible
or at least very hard to change it since we have already released 7.0.0.

As a side note: I think this also raises the question of how such changes are discussed and decided. I don't think many people realised that a thread entitled:

"[GRASS-SVN] r62845 - in grass/trunk/scripts: . d.shadedmap r.shadedmap"

discussed the renaming of modules.

I would encourage that in the future we go through a process that is minutely more formalies, i.e. that once the discussion in such a thread has ripened a new thread is created with subject making it clear that there is a proposal for a significant renaming of modules. Nothing worth an RFC, just a some "good practice".

Moritz