[GRASS-dev] new mac binaries posted - but problems

I’ve posted new Mac binaries for all versions along with the frameworks I used to make these–to make sure that you all have the correct frameworks.

But there is a problem that could range from annoying to serious for users of these binaries–and maybe the set I just replaced. Recent changes to GRASS to make it easier to switch to different languages have in fact (ironically) made GRASS crash, especially for non-English users.

For english users, you just need to add the following line to your .grassrc6 file, located in your home folder.

LANG: en_US.UTF-8

But your .grassrc6 file is an INVISIBLE file on the Mac normally (i.e., it begins with a dot), making this something of a pain. You can use TextWrangler or another editor which reads invisible files to edit this file (I like pico from the terminal). Or you can make invisible files visible. I’ve posted a little AppleScript that will do this, named Invisibility Toggler. Each time you run it it will expose or hide your invisible files.

You may or may not need to add this same line to your rc file, inside the hidden .grass7 folder (it was already set OK in mine somehow).

For people with non-English systems this is more complicated. You do need to add the corresponding line to your .grassrc6 file. For spanish, this should be:

LANG: es_ES.UTF-8

But there is another problem in that it reads some system variables too. So you need to set LC_CTYPE and LC_ALL correctly to your language type. I still need to test this more, but here is what I think you need to do.

  1. Test this. Start GRASS after editing your .grassrc6 file. It will open but give you errors complaining about UTF-8 and the menus won’t work correctly. Quit the GUI (under the file menu) but DON’T exit GRASS from the terminal. From the terminal enter the following:

export LC_CTYPE=es_ES.UTF8
export LC_ALL=es_ES.UTF8

**Note that here it is UTF8 and NOT UTF-8.
Restart the GUI with the following command: g.gui wxpython

  1. If #1 fixes the menu issue, then try the following. Add these lines to your .grass.bashrc file. This is also a hidden file like .grassrc6

export LC_CTYPE=es_ES.UTF8
export LC_ALL=es_ES.UTF8

I hope that this is fixed soon.

Michael


C. Michael Barton
Visiting Scientist, Integrated Science Program
National Center for Atmospheric Research &
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
303-497-2889 (voice)

Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.edu