[GRASS5] dxf imports

[Glynn Clements]

Roger S. Miller wrote:

> I've been contemplating what needs to be done to integrate and improve the
> dxf import capabilities in GRASS.  My major problem centers around
> importing and displaying text.
> 
> The most well-developed GNU-licensed DXF import library I've found (DIME)
> apparently doesn't import text entities.  Currently I use a fairly simple
> program to extract text entities from a dxf file and store them in a paint
> labels file.  This process works very well if the paint labels are then
> used in ps.map.  It doesn't work well on the GRASS display; because
> paint.labels doesn't understand text rotation, transparent backgrounds
> and a number of other text features.
> 
> So I have a few short questions that y'all might be able to help with.
> 
> 1) Are there other dxf import libraries that I'm overlooking?
> 
> 2) Does GRASS have other text-display capabilities that I'm overlooking?

The display architecture has support for text rotation, but it has
been disabled in a number of places. Also, the functionality isn't
exposed by any user program (e.g. d.text).

If it would be useful, I can look into re-enabling the rotation
support, and exposing it, either with an option to d.text, or a
separate d.text.rotation program (the rotation persists between
clients).

> 3) If the answer to 2) is no then is anyone maintaining/upgrading the
> paint.labels package and do you expect that paint.labels (and its
> cousins) will be maintained in the future?

Is there any reason for maintaining the "paint" system? AFAICT, most
of its functionality is available via "ps.map", and Ghostscript
supports far more printers than the "paint" system.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>