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

[Russell Nelson]

Eric G. Miller writes:
 > Just having this discussion proves there isn't necessarily a "right
 > thing."  You may have certain expectations based on other experiences
 > but other folks are just as likely to have different expectations.

Yeah, but ... I'm right and they're wrong.  So logically, it must
follow that there *is* a right thing!

No, seriously, there's a whole body of scholarly work which tells how
to write software that people can understand.  The three principles
that Carl listed are ones where GRASS particularly falls short (sane
defaults, don't ask questions if the answer is not required, and never
destroy information without asking or allowing an undo).

And instead of whining (anymore) I'm going to start fixing.  I first
must figure out why merely compiling grass from CVS is killing my X
server.

 > It is a recognized fact, that the region concept trips up people new to
 > GRASS.

In my experience, when people commonly have trouble with something, it 
is the thing that is at fault, and should be repaired.  I have a plan
(defer region setting until it is absolutely necessary).  If you don't 
like it, what's your plan?

 > writing some tutorial documents that are current, so hopefully those
 > folks are charging ahead.

Helena has already mentioned this.

 > r.in.gdal fully supports GeoTIFF (among others).  There are import
 > routines for some image types that don't have such information. r.in.bin
 > supports generic raw binary formats, for instance.

Okay, then perhaps libgdal should be required to build grass, and
should be distributed with (or at least alongside) grass.  I was quite 
confused when r.in.gdal complained that it couldn't find a shared
library.  Can someone explain what problem is solved by building
r.in.gdal even though libgdal is unavailable?

-- 
-russ nelson              http://russnelson.com | Okay, enough is enough!
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