[GRASS5] dxf imports

[Markus Neteler]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 06:48:13PM +0000, Glynn Clements wrote:
> 
> 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).

When enabled, it may become possible to print text labels along
vector lines (useful for contours on d.vect.labels). However,
that may be a non-trivial task.
 
> > 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.

The only usage I know is the (oldish) GRASSLinks. However, there
is a license conflict in GRASSLinks (see other mailing list).
Anyone using the paint driver? [MapServer does a nice job, when
libgrass from Frank Warmerdam also supports vector and sites data,
there is no reason to think about GRASSLinks].

Markus