[GRASS-dev] v.to.rast with category label support

[Helena Mitasova]

While working on a replacement data set for spearfish
I found that when we convert from vector data to raster there is no  
option to add labels
so it needs to be done manually after the conversion.
But there is only r.support to do that and it would be hard to use if  
you have
large number of categories and it is practically unusable if the
category numbers are large (e.g. I have only 5 zipcodes ranging from  
27511 - 27606
and r.support wants me to start with category 1).

I rarely have to use this for my research work and if it is needed
I just edit the cat file, but that is not a good solution.

currently we have:
v.to.rast input=name output=name [use=string] [column=name]  
[layer=integer] [value=float]

would it be possible to add
uselabel= with options at least: attr,cat, although some people may  
find the others useful: val,z,dir
column= this one does not have to be numeric for labels

Or is there any other way how to handle the raster map cat labels  
that I am missing?

Helena

P.S. Markus, Brad I am posting this to the list as it involves vector  
data conversion
rather than just import.


Helena Mitasova
Dept. of Marine, Earth and Atm. Sciences
1125 Jordan Hall, NCSU Box 8208,
Raleigh NC 27695
http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/