[GRASS-dev] No Required GUI section for g.list and g.remove

[Paulo van Breugel]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:06 AM, Moritz Lennert <
mlennert at club.worldonline.be> wrote:

> On 14/10/14 09:14, Paulo van Breugel wrote:
>
>> Putting the 'ignore' option in  separate tab with patterns is fine I
>> think. Also, for g.remove to have the 'type' and 'name' together in one
>> tab is also a good idea imho.
>>
>> I am not sure I understand the last question; you mean to add the
>> possibility to make an option required but still have the option to put
>> it in another section? I think that would be a good idea, not only in
>> this case, but more in general, it would make it easier to create an
>> consistent interface for modules that require more than a few inputs.
>> It might be a good idea to flag options as required, e.g., by adding
>> '(required)' after the option name?
>>
>
> I'm not sure I agree with this as this would leave the door open for
> required flags to be disseminated across several sections. I like the fact
> that the use immediately sees what is required to run the module.
>

I guess it is a matter of preference. There are some grey area or cases
where this separate 'required' tab does not really work i.m.h.o.

The '-f' flag in g.remove is one example. You can run the module without
(so it shouldn't go in the 'required' tab), but you can't do what the
module is basically meant to do without it, which is removing layers (so in
that sense it should be a required choice).

Perhaps a better example is r.random. One of the required options is the
output layer. That can be a raster layer, a vector layer or both. Because
of this construct, the required output name cannot be marked as required.
Solution is to use a separate tab 'optional' where the user can provide the
output name of the vector, raster or both layers. So the user has to fill
in required information in a 'required tab' and an 'optional' tab. I don't
think it is really problematic as failing to give the output name results
in a clear error message, but it isn't exactly consistent.

But at the end, for me any solution would be fine, as long as it is clearly
described and error messages are clear (and it would of course be nice if
where possible the number of clicks or scrolling are minimized).


>
> Moritz
>
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