[GRASS5] Legends in GRASS

[Markus Neteler]

Helena

(cc to GRASS 5, sorry for so much traffic today)

On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 11:24:12AM -0500, Helena Mitasova wrote:
> Markus
> 
> I meant d.leg.thin or d.legend, because d.leg.thin helps when you have
> continuous data (in fact Bill did it when I started to do more continuous
> data stuff with s.surf.tps and r.flow) but it does not resolve the problem
> of placing the legends for category data and for continuous data it is
> useless for data with non-linear values (such as flowaccumulation - just
> try to draw a legend for the dsout output of r.flow). All of this was
> solved with legends for SG3d (you can chose discrete or continuous, you
> can place the legend with mouse both for discrete and continous and you
> can define the values for which the color is shown for both discrete and
> continuous and you could even chose the size of the font - the
> capabilities are described on the web), however nobody seems to be
> interested to include it into grass5 although that means that for many
> maps you cannot really display your data in a meaningful way.

I fully agree - the legends problem is severe. 
For the others: The SG3d code is here:
 grass_exp/src.contrib/GMSL/SG3d
 grass_exp/src.contrib/GMSL/sg4d

-> experimental tree, not stable branch.

Especially sg4d is great software, see
http://www2.gis.uiuc.edu:2280/modviz/viz/vol1.html

> I am writing
> this long mail to urge you to put the legends issue on top of the agenda
> for the developers meeting, it shoudl take an experienced programer few
> days to implement it when using Bill's SG3d code.
[...]
> People just now expect to get the legend along
> with their map as ArcView does it and parctiacally all of on-line mapping
> services do too. So not being able to get the legend when looking at your
> map is a big turn off for people who may want to use GRASS.

... very true...

> For spearfish when you do the legend for geology you get either huge
> squares and letters, or if you run it as if it was a continuous map so
> that you can get the legend smaller then you do not get the cat labels for
> all colors. The easy workaround how to get the legend along the map is to
> stretch the window to make space for it (rather than using frames which is
> how you are supposed to do it, but it is really inpractical - it is used
> in d.display).
[...] 
> Helena

All open for comments...

Markus