summaries of contributed programs

Simon_Cox3 · August 4, 1992, 2:47pm

We are a new GRASS site, with some plans for developing some new analysis
tools. Past experience in programming has shown that quickest results are
often gained by modifying a piece of exisiting code, rather than starting
from scratch, so I wanted to hunt around for likely stuff in the existing
distribution. Our site has not downloaded much of the code in "related"
or "contributed", so the manual pages for these are not easily available
to see if anything suits. As far as I can see, the only way to find out
what is out there is to go through the process of downloading and unpacking.
Since 95% of the time the program will not be useful to us, this seems to be
wasteful.

Is there a compilation of summaries of contributed programs anywhere that
can be grabbed *without* downloading all of the archives?

Wouldn't it make sense for manual pages for all contributed programs to be
stored in a separate archive so that they can be accessed independently?

Is this functionality already available somehow?

What do the people at the moon think about this?

Our particular interest in using it for geological problems. I had very
little response to a previous posting enquiring about geological analysis
programs to use with GRASS, so am now planning to do some development work
myself.

Thanks all.

Darrell_McCauley1 · August 4, 1992, 1:42pm

tools. Past experience in programming has shown that quickest results are
often gained by modifying a piece of exisiting code, rather than starting
from scratch, so I wanted to hunt around for likely stuff in the existing

usually... (not to spread discord among the believers, but some of the
code looks terrible. most is okay though :).

Is there a compilation of summaries of contributed programs anywhere that
can be grabbed *without* downloading all of the archives?

I seem to recall seeing some sort of index of commands, perhaps in the
programming manual. I don't recall if descriptions were attached, but
this would be a good place to start. Sounds like a good student project
for a GIS class (anyone teach such a class?

Wouldn't it make sense for manual pages for all contributed programs to be
stored in a separate archive so that they can be accessed independently?

no, not really (since the programs are contributed). This may present
unnecessary burden on the moon-maintainer(s). I think that a readily
available summary (perhaps with a paragraph for each command, when
necessary) would serve the purpose.

Is this functionality already available somehow?

Perhaps if someone took the one-line descriptions from all man pages,
but longer descriptions would be more useful.

--Darrell McCauley, Purdue University