[GRASS-dev] New GUI startup discussion

GRASS GRASS developer
1

Dear all,

We will meet to discuss ideas for the new startup of GRASS GIS specifically using the GUI. The meeting will be a video call on Thursday starting at 18:00 UTC.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20200514T180000&p1=1440&p2=204&p3=195&p4=51&p5=207&p6=671

This will be a great opportunity to welcome this year’s GSoC student Linda Kladivova to our community. Linda will be working on GSoC project which is aiming to move the GUI startup screen to a next level. The GSoC project will be roughly following Proposal A3: Data tree and big buttons [1].

During the call, we will discuss this proposal and how does it relate to greater ideas about starting GRASS GIS.

The proposal A3 was developed based on painstaking discussion [3] at Community Sprint in Prague 2019 and is described in a detailed roadmap [4].

I will send a link to the call here right before the meeting. We will use Zoom.

Best,

Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#ProposalA3Prague2019:Datatreeandbigbuttons
[3] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#GRASSGISCommunitySprintPrague2019
[4] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

2

This subject if interest to me.

I have read the different proposals which are interesting.

We have developped watershed analysis package of roughly 10 000 lines of code using Grass for not GIS field user. They found the package interesting by be starting curve is very difficult. We ask them to install Grass and some other libraries which is not very difficult. We ask them to put the package (Python scripts) somewhere. Starting Grass is intimedating to them.

It would nice to have the possibility to define a config file which contain the basic (projection and datum reference data for the user area) and we ask them to put it in some specific place in their dicrectory. When Grass start for the first time, it check for it and offer that possibility to the user. That config can point to some dataset. This concept can be use for the other options offered to the user. That proposal can be acheive by other means with the recipe given. The objective is to have way to define the basic for non GIS user.

Thanks

P.S. I cannot access to ref [1]

Le 20-05-11 à 13 h 22, Vaclav Petras a écrit :

[Externe UL*]
Dear all,

We will meet to discuss ideas for the new startup of GRASS GIS specifically using the GUI. The meeting will be a video call on Thursday starting at 18:00 UTC.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20200514T180000&p1=1440&p2=204&p3=195&p4=51&p5=207&p6=671

This will be a great opportunity to welcome this year's GSoC student Linda Kladivova to our community. Linda will be working on GSoC project which is aiming to move the GUI startup screen to a next level. The GSoC project will be roughly following Proposal A3: Data tree and big buttons [1].

During the call, we will discuss this proposal and how does it relate to greater ideas about starting GRASS GIS.

The proposal A3 was developed based on painstaking discussion [3] at Community Sprint in Prague 2019 and is described in a detailed roadmap [4].

I will send a link to the call here right before the meeting. We will use Zoom.

Best,
Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#ProposalA3Prague2019:Datatreeandbigbuttons
[3] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#GRASSGISCommunitySprintPrague2019
[4] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

*ATTENTION : L’émetteur de ce courriel est externe à l’Université Laval.
Évitez de cliquer sur un hyperlien, d’ouvrir une pièce jointe ou de transmettre des informations si vous ne connaissez pas l’expéditeur du courriel. En cas de doute, contactez l’équipe de soutien informatique de votre unité ou hameconnage@ulaval.ca.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
P.S. Veuillez noter mon nouveau No de poste téléphonique
-----------
Robert Lagacé, ing., agr., prof.titulaire
Département de SGA
2425 de l'agriculture
Université Laval
Québec, Québec, G1V 0A6
courriel : robert.lagace@fsaa.ulaval.ca<mailto:robert.lagace@fsaa.ulaval.ca>
tél: (418)-656-2131 poste 402276
fax : (418)-656-3723

3

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 12:03 AM Robert Lagacé <robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com> wrote:

It would nice to have the possibility to define a config file which contain the basic (projection and datum reference data for the user area) and we ask them to put it in some specific place in their dicrectory. When Grass start for the first time, it check for it and offer that possibility to the user. That config can point to some dataset. This concept can be use for the other options offered to the user. That proposal can be acheive by other means with the recipe given. The objective is to have way to define the basic for non GIS user.

If you have grassdata directory in your home directory or in Documents, GRASS GIS should automatically pick it up and the startup screen should show it when starting for the first time. Does this work for you? If it does and it is not sufficient, what is the behavior you are looking for?

If there is more than one location or more than one mapset to choose from, you can add or modify the file called rc in the .grass7 directory. It is little harder to set up, but would that help you? (See the contents below.) This does not start in the specified mapset, it only selects it in the startup screen. How does it compare to what is your desired state?

LOCATION_NAME: nc_spm_08
GISDBASE: /home/…/grassdata
MAPSET: PERMANENT

P.S. I cannot access to ref [1]

Can you access other OSGeo Trac pages? Try e.g. the following. What is the page or message you see?

https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo

Best,
Vaclav

4

The link to meeting today is below. We are starting in two hours at 18:00 UTC.

https://ncsu.zoom.us/j/94368491790?pwd=N21jNGlpelJiWEJ2dkoxTHBDT24ydz09

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 1:22 PM Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

We will meet to discuss ideas for the new startup of GRASS GIS specifically using the GUI. The meeting will be a video call on Thursday starting at 18:00 UTC.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20200514T180000&p1=1440&p2=204&p3=195&p4=51&p5=207&p6=671

This will be a great opportunity to welcome this year’s GSoC student Linda Kladivova to our community. Linda will be working on GSoC project which is aiming to move the GUI startup screen to a next level. The GSoC project will be roughly following Proposal A3: Data tree and big buttons [1].

During the call, we will discuss this proposal and how does it relate to greater ideas about starting GRASS GIS.

The proposal A3 was developed based on painstaking discussion [3] at Community Sprint in Prague 2019 and is described in a detailed roadmap [4].

I will send a link to the call here right before the meeting. We will use Zoom.

Best,

Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#ProposalA3Prague2019:Datatreeandbigbuttons
[3] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#GRASSGISCommunitySprintPrague2019
[4] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

5

Meeting minutes

  • Discussion happened in two areas plans for GSoC 2020 [1] and general direction and ideas for start of GRASS GIS through GUI with a special focus on the first-time user.

GSoC 2020

  • GSoC 2020 will be following the incremental additions strategy improving Location Wizard and Data Catalog (aka the Data tab or the Data tree), i.e., it is still roughly following the Prague Roamap [2] bringing immediate improvements to all users.

Prague Roadmap concerns and additions

  • In Startup screen, selecting (and double-clicking) a raster map in a Data tree should take user to the mapset which contains this raster and show this raster.
  • Projection database should be customizable using the same environmental variable which is used by GDAL or PROJ (if there is any).
  • Is double-clicking in the Data tree an obvious way of launching GRASS GIS in a mapset? (Or is it show data for this mapset?)

First-time users

  • First-time user should not have to deal with a concept of mapset (only addressed in the Location Wizard part of the roadmap).
  • A demo location with some minimal data should be part of the installation and copied to some default palace for the first-time user.

Left for the next time

  • Terminology (e.g., should we embrace the word project?)
  • More detailed analysis of skipping the startup screen, starting in a temporary or demo/world location, and just showing the Data tab instead of the Startup screen.
  • Exact behavior of workspace files, last used files, and last active session.

We plan a next general video meeting like this one some time during the summer.

Best,
Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 1:22 PM Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

We will meet to discuss ideas for the new startup of GRASS GIS specifically using the GUI. The meeting will be a video call on Thursday starting at 18:00 UTC.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20200514T180000&p1=1440&p2=204&p3=195&p4=51&p5=207&p6=671

This will be a great opportunity to welcome this year’s GSoC student Linda Kladivova to our community. Linda will be working on GSoC project which is aiming to move the GUI startup screen to a next level. The GSoC project will be roughly following Proposal A3: Data tree and big buttons [1].

During the call, we will discuss this proposal and how does it relate to greater ideas about starting GRASS GIS.

The proposal A3 was developed based on painstaking discussion [3] at Community Sprint in Prague 2019 and is described in a detailed roadmap [4].

I will send a link to the call here right before the meeting. We will use Zoom.

Best,

Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#ProposalA3Prague2019:Datatreeandbigbuttons
[3] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#GRASSGISCommunitySprintPrague2019
[4] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

6

I like very much this one. For specific case or region, we can just ask the user to replace those minimal data with a specific data set before starting.

···

Le 20-05-14 à 16 h 51, Vaclav Petras a écrit :

[Externe UL*]

Meeting minutes

  • Discussion happened in two areas plans for GSoC 2020 [1] and general direction and ideas for start of GRASS GIS through GUI with a special focus on the first-time user.

GSoC 2020

  • GSoC 2020 will be following the incremental additions strategy improving Location Wizard and Data Catalog (aka the Data tab or the Data tree), i.e., it is still roughly following the Prague Roamap [2] bringing immediate improvements to all users.

Prague Roadmap concerns and additions

  • In Startup screen, selecting (and double-clicking) a raster map in a Data tree should take user to the mapset which contains this raster and show this raster.
  • Projection database should be customizable using the same environmental variable which is used by GDAL or PROJ (if there is any).
  • Is double-clicking in the Data tree an obvious way of launching GRASS GIS in a mapset? (Or is it show data for this mapset?)

First-time users

  • First-time user should not have to deal with a concept of mapset (only addressed in the Location Wizard part of the roadmap).
  • A demo location with some minimal data should be part of the installation and copied to some default palace for the first-time user.

Left for the next time

  • Terminology (e.g., should we embrace the word project?)
  • More detailed analysis of skipping the startup screen, starting in a temporary or demo/world location, and just showing the Data tab instead of the Startup screen.
  • Exact behavior of workspace files, last used files, and last active session.

We plan a next general video meeting like this one some time during the summer.

Best,
Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 1:22 PM Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

We will meet to discuss ideas for the new startup of GRASS GIS specifically using the GUI. The meeting will be a video call on Thursday starting at 18:00 UTC.

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20200514T180000&p1=1440&p2=204&p3=195&p4=51&p5=207&p6=671

This will be a great opportunity to welcome this year’s GSoC student Linda Kladivova to our community. Linda will be working on GSoC project which is aiming to move the GUI startup screen to a next level. The GSoC project will be roughly following Proposal A3: Data tree and big buttons [1].

During the call, we will discuss this proposal and how does it relate to greater ideas about starting GRASS GIS.

The proposal A3 was developed based on painstaking discussion [3] at Community Sprint in Prague 2019 and is described in a detailed roadmap [4].

I will send a link to the call here right before the meeting. We will use Zoom.

Best,

Vaclav

[1] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/GSoC/2020/StartupWindow
[2] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#ProposalA3Prague2019:Datatreeandbigbuttons
[3] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#GRASSGISCommunitySprintPrague2019
[4] https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/wxGUIDevelopment/New_Startup#PragueRoadmap

*ATTENTION : L’émetteur de ce courriel est externe à l’Université Laval.
Évitez de cliquer sur un hyperlien, d’ouvrir une pièce jointe ou de transmettre des informations si vous ne connaissez pas l’expéditeur du courriel. En cas de doute, contactez l’équipe de soutien informatique de votre unité ou hameconnage@ulaval.ca.

-- 
P.S. Veuillez noter mon nouveau No de poste téléphonique
-----------
Robert Lagacé, ing., agr., prof.titulaire
Département de SGA
2425 de l'agriculture
Université Laval
Québec, Québec, G1V 0A6
courriel : [robert.lagace@fsaa.ulaval.ca](mailto:robert.lagace@fsaa.ulaval.ca)[<mailto:robert.lagace@fsaa.ulaval.ca>](mailto:robert.lagace@fsaa.ulaval.ca)
tél: (418)-656-2131 poste 402276
fax : (418)-656-3723
7

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 9:29 PM Robert Lagacé <robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com> wrote:

Le 20-05-14 à 16 h 51, Vaclav Petras a écrit :

  • A demo location with some minimal data should be part of the installation and copied to some default palace for the first-time user.

I like very much this one. For specific case or region, we can just ask the user to replace those minimal data with a specific data set before starting.

Yes, but even now you can something better than that in 7.6 and 7.8. See my previous response. GRASS GIS tries to guess where is your grassdata directory. It needs to be named that way (“grassdata”) and it needs to be in your home directory or in your Documents directory. (It should work regardless of locale at least on Linux and Windows. From the comments in the code [1], it seems I didn’t study macOS when I implemented that, but I would expected that to work.) Let us know if this works for you. (Does it behave this way and is it what you are looking for?)

[1] https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/blob/master/gui/wxpython/startup/utils.py#L23

8

On 15/05/20 03:54, Vaclav Petras wrote:

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 9:29 PM Robert Lagacé <robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com <mailto:robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com>> wrote:

    Le 20-05-14 à 16 h 51, Vaclav Petras a écrit :

    * A demo location with some minimal data should be part of the
    installation and copied to some default palace for the first-time
    user.

    I like very much this one. For specific case or region, we can just
    ask the user to replace those minimal data with a specific data set
    before starting.

Yes, but even now you can something better than that in 7.6 and 7.8. See my previous response. GRASS GIS tries to guess where is your grassdata directory. It needs to be named that way ("grassdata") and it needs to be in your home directory or in your Documents directory. (It should work regardless of locale at least on Linux and Windows. From the comments in the code [1], it seems I didn't study macOS when I implemented that, but I would expected that to work.) Let us know if this works for you. (Does it behave this way and is it what you are looking for?)

Any reason you only look for grassdata in lower case ? I might be old fashioned, but personnally I generally follow the idea of lowercase = file, uppercase = directory. Why not check for grassdata regardless of case, i.e. also accepting GRASSDATA or Grassdata or GRASSData?

Moritz

9

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 8:25 AM Moritz Lennert <mlennert@club.worldonline.be> wrote:

On 15/05/20 03:54, Vaclav Petras wrote:

On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 9:29 PM Robert Lagacé
<robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com mailto:[robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com](mailto:robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com)> wrote:

Le 20-05-14 à 16 h 51, Vaclav Petras a écrit :

  • A demo location with some minimal data should be part of the
    installation and copied to some default palace for the first-time
    user.
    I like very much this one. For specific case or region, we can just
    ask the user to replace those minimal data with a specific data set
    before starting.

Yes, but even now you can something better than that in 7.6 and 7.8. See
my previous response. GRASS GIS tries to guess where is your grassdata
directory. It needs to be named that way (“grassdata”) and it needs to
be in your home directory or in your Documents directory. (It should
work regardless of locale at least on Linux and Windows. From the
comments in the code [1], it seems I didn’t study macOS when I
implemented that, but I would expected that to work.) Let us know if
this works for you. (Does it behave this way and is it what you are
looking for?)

Any reason you only look for grassdata in lower case ? I might be old
fashioned, but personnally I generally follow the idea of lowercase =
file, uppercase = directory. Why not check for grassdata regardless of
case, i.e. also accepting GRASSDATA or Grassdata or GRASSData?

Sound good. Just open an issue to discuss the details.

10

On 16/05/20 18:08, Vaclav Petras wrote:

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 8:25 AM Moritz Lennert <mlennert@club.worldonline.be <mailto:mlennert@club.worldonline.be>> wrote:

    On 15/05/20 03:54, Vaclav Petras wrote:
     >
     > On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 9:29 PM Robert Lagacé
     > <robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com <mailto:robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com>
    <mailto:robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com
    <mailto:robert.lagace.qc@gmail.com>>> wrote:
     >
     > Le 20-05-14 à 16 h 51, Vaclav Petras a écrit :
     >>
     >> * A demo location with some minimal data should be part of the
     >> installation and copied to some default palace for the
    first-time
     >> user.
     > I like very much this one. For specific case or region, we
    can just
     > ask the user to replace those minimal data with a specific
    data set
     > before starting.
     >
     > Yes, but even now you can something better than that in 7.6 and
    7.8. See
     > my previous response. GRASS GIS tries to guess where is your
    grassdata
     > directory. It needs to be named that way ("grassdata") and it
    needs to
     > be in your home directory or in your Documents directory. (It should
     > work regardless of locale at least on Linux and Windows. From the
     > comments in the code [1], it seems I didn't study macOS when I
     > implemented that, but I would expected that to work.) Let us know if
     > this works for you. (Does it behave this way and is it what you are
     > looking for?)

    Any reason you only look for grassdata in lower case ? I might be old
    fashioned, but personnally I generally follow the idea of lowercase =
    file, uppercase = directory. Why not check for grassdata regardless of
    case, i.e. also accepting GRASSDATA or Grassdata or GRASSData?

Sound good. Just open an issue to discuss the details.

https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/issues/644

Moritz