[GRASS5] GUI for GRASS

[Mike Thomas]

Hi again.

> That really would be going all the way ;) Using Smalltalk would
> probably reduce the developer base to you and me; actually, probably
> just you.

Before shutting the door on Squeak I would point this project:

http://swiki.agro.uba.ar/microcosms

out to those geographers who might want to try complex systems simulation
without writing special software.

I/O to one or two simple Grass data formats would be very easy to add - you
don't need libgrass to do it.  Squeak also has EPS output of any graphical
object.

> a) interface between C and just about any other language, and
>
> b) link object code compiled on one system (e.g. yours) with object
> code compiled on another system (e.g. your OS vendor's).

Agreed.

>
> > As a matter of interest, I wrote from scratch some some simple minded
> > Haskell which parses and displays Grass 4 and 5 CELL rasters (plain and
RLE)
> > but not FCELL, including several variations of colour file and it took
only
> > a few hundred lines of code, so there is plenty of attraction in using a
> > higher level language than C.
>
> FWIW, I did r.out.ppm3 in 76 lines of Haskell (plus ~300 lines of
> GreenCard for the relevant libgis bindings). For languages other than
> C, I would strongly recommend interfacing to the GRASS libraries
> rather than reimplementing them.

Is the Greencard stuff publicly available?

I decided to do otherwise as I can't stand libgis.  Parser combinators make
it really easy to do the Grass text file parsing.

By the way, I am not suggesting that GRASS officially move to Haskell (or
any other non-mainstream language).  I think there is lots of scope for an
easier set of primitives for external bindings though and I think C is an
excellent choice for doing that.

> It works well on Windows, where anything other than 100% binary
> compatible with the current version of MSVC is considered an outright
> bug. Linux isn't too bad, but even there programs written in C++ are a
> lot less portable than those written in C. On commercial Unices, you
> need the complete GNU toolchain and libraries, and to have built any
> other libraries with those; otherwise you're asking for trouble.

It's a shame because C++ has a lot of good points too.

Cheers

Mike Thomas