[GRASS5] A naive opinion on how grass *should* work

[Helena Mitasova]

Russell has a good point of view for the very first time user - all of us
already have
at least one GRASS location set-up so r.in.gdal will do a lot what Russell is
describing here,
however I have found from working with other people that
for the first timers the necessity to set up a region at the beginning is a
surprisingly big obstacle.
(well not so surprisingly, given the oldish interface for doing that)
I guess that the problem to getting this addressed is that most of the issues

mentioned below are not such big issues once you use GRAS a lot and
especially
with the improvements in r.in.gdal. (Russ use r.in.gdal instead of
r.in.tiff).
For example the issue of adapting the region to displayed map (as Carl has
mentioned
before) would drive you crazy if you are doing some modeling using a larger
number of
maps with different extent and resolutions and you need to preview those
maps, so that kind of behavior
should be optional and not default, but having GRASS create some default
LOCATION into which
data can be imported when it is started for the very first time may make life
easier for the newcomers.

>when I go into a location, grass should change my
>current directory to be that of the location.

By no means you would want to do that - you don't want to touch the stuff in
that directory
if you are newbie. Even for experienced users, you only very rarely want to
go there -
your current directory is best to be that of your current directory,
especially if you have
there some data that you want to import. All your files should be managed by
the g.* commands
so you do not have to go to your location.

I guess that these things won't change for GRASS5.0 but for GRASS5.1 there
are probably suggestions
already how to make the first startup of grass simpler.

Helena

Nelson wrote:

> Okay, I will cheerfully label the following as a completely naive
> opinion on how grass *should* work from the point of a newbie.  If I
> am saying something totally wrong or stupid, please say so.  If you
> want to say "Hey, great ideas, Russ.  Here's your CVS login, go for
> it!", that's a legitimate response as well.
>
> First, its ridiculous to have to set the region just to run grass.
> Completely unnecessary.  Maybe some commands need to have a default
> region.  If so, they can say "Please run g.region first".
>
> Second, images that are not georeferenced should *always* be imported
> into an x,y projection, and d.rast should show the entire image by
> default.
>
> Third, when a map is georeferenced, *then* it goes into a location.
>
> Third, no, wait, Fourth, the scope of a location should be determined
> by the data stored in that location.  Since all such data is
> georeferenced (see "Third"), the bounds of the data set the scope of
> the location, not vice-versa.
>
> In other words, grass should be more approachable.  I should be able
> to go to a GIS clearinghouse (such as the New York State one at
> Cornell), download a georeferenced map, run grass5 (for the first
> time!) and be able to do this and have it work:
>
> grass5
>
>     yeah, I know, grass currently insists upon setting up a database.
>     While that's arguably a good idea, so are defaults.  If ~/.grassrc
>     does not exist, then create ~/grass.  If that directory already
>     exists, then create ~/grass1 (etc).  And put that into ~/.grassrc
>     as the default directory.
>
>     Yeah, I know, grass currently insists on wanting to know the
>     default region.  See "First".
>
> r.in.tiff /tmp/O44075.tiff
>
>     yeah, I know, r.in.tiff expects tagged arguments rather than
>     positional.  Why should I have to type input=foo and output=bar,
>     when 99.99 times out of a hundred, the first argument is *always*
>     the input and the second argument is *always* the output?
>
>     Yeah, I know, r.in.tiff expects an output name as well.  What's
>     wrong with
>
> d.rast
>
>     Yeah, I know, d.rast wants a filename.  If there's only one raster
>     filename, why bother prompting for it?
>
>     Yeah, I know, d.rast knows that I should run d.mon first.  In the
>     usual case, given the X11 window system, shouldn't d.rast simply start
>     up x0 if it's not running already?  Reasonable defaults make the
>     newbie's life much easier.
>
> And another thing: when I go into a location, grass should change my
> current directory to be that of the location.  And all of my datasets
> should have an empty filename there, e.g. r.O44075.  That way, I can
> say "d.rast r.<tab>", and bash's filename completion makes my life
> easier.  Yeah, I know, that's not something a newbie would think of.
> I'm so used to filename completion, though, that not having it is
> painful.
>
> Yes, I know that GIS is complicated, and there's a lot to know.  But
> at least you can do your best to have a learning curve that goes like
> this:
>
> |                                                                |
> |                                                                |
> |                           ...                                  |
> |                       ....                                     |
> |                   ....                                         |
> |                ...                                             |
> |             ...                                                |
> |         ....                                                   |
> |     ....                                                       |
> |.....                                                           |
>
> instead of this:
>
> |                                                                |
> |                                                                |
> |                       .............                            |
> |             ..........                                         |
> |      .......                                                   |
> |    ..                                                          |
> |   .                                                            |
> |  .                                                             |
> | .                                                              |
> |.                                                               |
>
> --
> -russ nelson              http://russnelson.com | Okay, enough is enough!
> Crynwr sells support for free software  | PGPok | Can we PLEASE all stop
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