[GRASS5] A naive opinion on how grass *should* work

[Russell Nelson]

Okay, I will cheerfully label the following as a completely naive
opinion on how grass *should* work from the point of a newbie.  If I
am saying something totally wrong or stupid, please say so.  If you
want to say "Hey, great ideas, Russ.  Here's your CVS login, go for
it!", that's a legitimate response as well.

First, its ridiculous to have to set the region just to run grass.
Completely unnecessary.  Maybe some commands need to have a default
region.  If so, they can say "Please run g.region first".

Second, images that are not georeferenced should *always* be imported
into an x,y projection, and d.rast should show the entire image by
default.

Third, when a map is georeferenced, *then* it goes into a location.

Third, no, wait, Fourth, the scope of a location should be determined
by the data stored in that location.  Since all such data is
georeferenced (see "Third"), the bounds of the data set the scope of
the location, not vice-versa.

In other words, grass should be more approachable.  I should be able
to go to a GIS clearinghouse (such as the New York State one at
Cornell), download a georeferenced map, run grass5 (for the first
time!) and be able to do this and have it work:

grass5

    yeah, I know, grass currently insists upon setting up a database.
    While that's arguably a good idea, so are defaults.  If ~/.grassrc
    does not exist, then create ~/grass.  If that directory already
    exists, then create ~/grass1 (etc).  And put that into ~/.grassrc
    as the default directory.

    Yeah, I know, grass currently insists on wanting to know the
    default region.  See "First".

r.in.tiff /tmp/O44075.tiff

    yeah, I know, r.in.tiff expects tagged arguments rather than
    positional.  Why should I have to type input=foo and output=bar,
    when 99.99 times out of a hundred, the first argument is *always*
    the input and the second argument is *always* the output?

    Yeah, I know, r.in.tiff expects an output name as well.  What's
    wrong with 

d.rast

    Yeah, I know, d.rast wants a filename.  If there's only one raster
    filename, why bother prompting for it?

    Yeah, I know, d.rast knows that I should run d.mon first.  In the
    usual case, given the X11 window system, shouldn't d.rast simply start 
    up x0 if it's not running already?  Reasonable defaults make the
    newbie's life much easier.

And another thing: when I go into a location, grass should change my
current directory to be that of the location.  And all of my datasets
should have an empty filename there, e.g. r.O44075.  That way, I can
say "d.rast r.<tab>", and bash's filename completion makes my life
easier.  Yeah, I know, that's not something a newbie would think of.
I'm so used to filename completion, though, that not having it is
painful.

Yes, I know that GIS is complicated, and there's a lot to know.  But
at least you can do your best to have a learning curve that goes like
this:

|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                           ...                                  |
|                       ....                                     |
|                   ....                                         |
|                ...                                             |
|             ...                                                |
|         ....                                                   |
|     ....                                                       |
|.....                                                           |


instead of this:

|                                                                |
|                                                                |
|                       .............                            |
|             ..........                                         |
|      .......                                                   |
|    ..                                                          |
|   .                                                            |
|  .                                                             |
| .                                                              |
|.                                                               |


-- 
-russ nelson              http://russnelson.com | Okay, enough is enough!
Crynwr sells support for free software  | PGPok | Can we PLEASE all stop
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