[GRASS5] proposal for a grass command interface description forautomatic GUI building

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

Hi Tim,

On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 07:28:45AM -0500, Tim Cera wrote:
> Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> > My main ideas for the way to go are
> > 
> >         * GRASS programs can be asked for the parameter description
> >         * parameter description is based on XML.
> 
> This is great!  I would add one additional criteria.  That the XML is
> kept in a seperate file so that changes could be made to the interface
> without re-compiling.  Something like
> $GISBASE/task_description/r.basins.file.xml.  This would allow very
> rapid language changes (German, French, ...etc.) and user customizations
> - just replace/edit the XML files.

Thats the way it is currently done for tcltkgrass.
One disadvantage is that you have a higher maintenance effort in case
you change a parameter name or add/delete one or add a new GRASS command.

If you are looking at the localization: To my mind, the language must be
incorporated already within the GRASS commands. They will (provided the
translation has been done) then speak your language in the command
line version as well as the GUI. Perhaps we'll have .po-files for most
languages for GRASS one day. It is a major effort and we should optimize
the work on this.

> Any developed interface systems should use the --task_description (I
> changed the internal "-" in your original message to an "_") instead of
> the raw XML.  Maybe --interface_description, since a user will probably
> never type it?  And then change the XML directory name to match.

First of all I like the '-' instead of '_' since it is the GNU style.
Perhaps we can adopt the GNU parser for the command line...

I regard GRASS commands task-oriented. I intentionally used the term 'task'
for the corresponding XML tag to later have the option to put together
many <task ..> (including perhaps some <task-group ...>)
to a complete <interface ...> definition which would define a whole
GRASS application.

However, if you like --interface-description I can use that as well.
Right now we have the freedom to choose. Later on it will be difficult
to change.

Cheers

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/

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