[GRASS5] html docs from tcltkgrass + proposal

Justin Hickey jhickey at hpcc.nectec.or.th
Fri Dec 1 01:33:29 EST 2000


Hello all

Andreas Lange wrote:
> I would not recommend to remove the .tcltkgrass file, as it will 
> remove all user configuration (fonts, window sizes, open windows/x
> drivers). This is not the usual behaviour of any application i know.

I agree.

> If we do radical changes on the .tcltkgrass format/internals, we
> should set up a new filename (e. g. .tcltkgrass5 ).

Unfortunately, I would advise against this. I would suggest that writing
a conversion script is a better way to handle this. All it requires is a
tcltkgrass version as the first line of .tcltkgrass and a small script
to make any necessary changes. Then when the tcltkgrass module is
compiled, it checks for a .tcltkgrass file, checks the version, then
performs the proper substitutions to create an up to date file. At least
this method seems to be used in other programs I've used.

Also, I was going to propose this later but since it has come up, I'll
propose it now. Once we release grass 5 stable, I think we should remove
the version number from directory names and filenames. So grass5 would
just be grass, and grass would be stored in /usr/local/grass by default.
The only problem I can think of is gmake5 since gmake is also the
command for GNU make. But this is solved with a simple name change. 

A good argument for this change is our recent hassle we had with wish
and trying to determine whether a wish8.* command was installed. The
final solution was to simply search for wish with no version numbers
since most installations will have wish linked to the appropriate
command. Once the version numbers were gone, life became much easier.
Also, the fewer places we have references to the version number, the
easier it is to change the code when the version changes. It will also
clean up existing code by eliminating $VERSION variables. Therefore, I
propose we remove the version numbers from directory names and
filenames. What do people think?

While I'm at it I will make one more proposal. Throughout the code and
documentation, the .grassrc5 file is almost always referred to as the
"gisrc file". Does anyone object to changing the name from .grassrc to
.gisrc? Of course, this change will be for 5.1.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jazzman (a.k.a. Justin Hickey)  e-mail: jhickey at hpcc.nectec.or.th
High Performance Computing Center
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
Bangkok, Thailand
==================================================================
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of us who do.  ---Anonymous

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