[GRASS-user] grass70 and display monitor

Sat Dec 5 10:53:51 EST 2009

On Dec 5, 2009, at 3:14 AM, Jan Hartmann wrote:

> I very much agree with Markus. The main point is that a command line  
> interface is *much* faster than a GUI, once you have learned to use  
> it. This can take a long time to learn (take the VIM editor for  
> example), and for most people that is simply not worth it. When  you  
> "have it in your fingers" however, it really is much more efficient.  
> I still use Grass54 for digitizing, even if I have to convert the  
> vector maps into the new format, because digitizing, the most labour- 
> intensive job there is in GIS, gets done much more efficiently with  
> the left hand using the keyboard, and the right hand using the  
> mouse. That program has disappeared, but Markus's example  
> illustrates perfectly the case for the actual version of GRASS.

A point on digitizing. If you haven't tried it, you should take a look  
at the digitizing that Martin has built into the new GUI. Because it  
has hot-key equivalents for all buttons, you CAN digitize with your  
right hand on the mouse and left on the keyboard. It also has a lot of  
contextual menus that you access by right clicking while you digitize  
rather than having to move to a separate text area like in 5.4.

>
> I understand that programmers  have limited time and resources, and  
> I certainly agree that these should be spent on the GUI: it's  
> important for many more people than the bunch of old-hand command  
> line hackers. I *would* plead however to leave as much of the old  
> functionality in place as possible. If I understand Glynn's posting  
> on this subject correctly however, this will be very difficult, as  
> the Vask library has been removed (why?), and all mouse interaction  
> has been dropped from the display commands.

Glynn has done a good job of describing why these libraries have been  
removed from a programming perspective. I just want to note that in  
GRASS 7, if you want to do GRASS completely via commands (i.e., that  
is NON-interactive), you can do so. Type commands from a system  
terminal or from the terminal built into the GUI. If you want to do  
GRASS completely interactively without typing commands, you can do so  
using the pulldowns, scrolling lists, buttons, etc of the wxPython  
GUI. If you want to type commands for all non-interactive uses of  
GRASS but want to interact with displayed maps using a mouse, you can  
do so in the GUI.

So far, the only concrete function that I've yet read that is missing  
from these varied ways to interact with GRASS is a command-line  
autocompletion that Markus mentioned. There may be other missing  
functionality but no one has detailed any.

>
> If that is too much trouble, I would be perfectly happy to use older  
> versions of GRASS for dedicated purposes, provided I could use the  
> same mapsets. Copying and converting  maps between different  
> versions if the program is a major source of errors, some of them  
> very insidious. Would that be an alternative for retaining old  
> functionality: reading directly from old-style databases?

This is not something I do any coding for, but AFAIK, GRASS will  
continue to be able to read GRASS files from the past, either directly  
or via translation.

Michael

>
> Jan
>
> Markus Neteler wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu 
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Roy,
>>>
>>> I guess you haven't been following quite all of this discussion.
>>>
>>
>> Sincerely, I am in the same boat apparently, see below.
>>
>>
>>> You can still run all module commands in GRASS from any terminal.  
>>> You can
>>> TYPE d* commands into the command line interface of the GUI and  
>>> have the
>>> resulting maps displayed in the GUI display canvas. You can also  
>>> type the
>>> d.* commands into any xterminal and have grass maps saved as  
>>> graphic files
>>> to view. These can be viewed automatically with free image viewers  
>>> (like
>>> d.mon did) as Glynn has shown. The old, primitive, INTERACTIVE  
>>> xterminal
>>> behavior is all that has been dropped.
>>>
>>
>> And that's the key issue here.
>> Personally, I need (beside d.rast/d.vect)
>> - d.zoom
>> - d.measure
>> - d.where
>>
>> to interactively work with the maps. GRASS analysis consists in my  
>> case
>> of a significant amount of graphically digging in the maps.
>>
>>
>>> For interactive use, there is a much
>>> more sophisticated interface that exists now--that is, you can do  
>>> a lot more
>>> interaction than you could do before.
>>>
>>
>> True. But it is not yet as efficient as the old method. To better  
>> explain (and
>> please don't get me wrong, you have done a tremendous job with the  
>> new GUI!!,
>> note that I am one of these funky cmd line power users :-):
>> - to visualize a, say, raster map which I have been looking at 3  
>> months ago,
>>  I type in bash CTRL-R and a fraction of what I remember of the  
>> name, then maybe
>>  another few CTRL-R to cycle to the right one. Enter and I see it.
>> - Using the GUI, I have to use the icon/find the menu entry, select
>> the map in the
>>   map selector (problem here, my MODIS LST time series have 5 *  
>> 1460 maps per
>>   mapset, that would be 7300 maps to scroll through!), then accept it
>> and have it
>>   listed in the map list. Still I don't see it because the "Render"
>> button isn't activated
>>   by default... (see my other poll about this some time ago). So,  
>> using the GUI
>>   here is unrealistic. Sure, I am a strange user :)
>>
>>
>>> Besides simply not being GRASS 4 or 5 (which are still available  
>>> to be run),
>>> what functionality are you missing?
>>>
>>
>> The speed of displaying maps and the ease of querying them. If  
>> there was a
>> command line possibility to control the wxGUI, I would most likely  
>> make
>> the switch to GRASS 7. Speed really matters for me. I am routinely  
>> analysing
>> 11,000+ maps and regularly work in 3 projects in one morning, so  
>> the command
>> line history is a real lifesaver here to also recall what I have done
>> (and to eventually
>> morph it to a document).
>>
>> The new GUI, integrated with the command line possibility to throw  
>> in the maps,
>> would be the perfect combination.
>>
>> Markus
>> _______________________________________________
>> grass-user mailing list
>> grass-user at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user
>>
>>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/attachments/20091205/ea276f38/attachment-0001.html