[GRASS5] a set of wishes for GRASS 5.7

[Markus Neteler]

On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 10:52:55PM -0700, Michael Barton wrote:
[...]
> I'd like to see v.report come back with options to select fields to 
> report on.

I have extended today the documentation of v.to.db to explain
v.report-like functionality.

[...]
> Along these lines, it would also be nice to get back the interactive 
> versions of r.reclass and r.recode that permit simple editing of 
> category values. It would also be very nice to get back a way to enter 
> or modify raster label strings. These were done under r.support, which 
> is missing from 5.7. There is currently no way to modify raster labels 
> in GRASS 5.7.

To make the tcl/tk GUI bidirectional needs some (little?) work.
Since it was done for 5.3 as far as I remember, someone with TclTk
skills might be able to modify grass51/lib/gis/parser.c 
Unfortunately I am not skilled.
 
> In sum, GRASS 5.7 has some new and very powerful ways to query 
> attribute data, but has very minimal means to manage those data--even 
> less so than in 5.0 and 5.3.

Really? The SQL support (see db.execute, db.select) is not that bad.
Please keep in mind that there are less than two full-time developers
only for 5.7. Given that the new functionality is impressive!


> 2. A flag that sets a default database connection (using the standard 
> GRASS dbf files) for commands that have a database connection option. 
> I'm still having trouble specifying the correct syntax to connect to 
> the database in the new Spearfish data set for 5.7. The flag would make 
> the connection to the database located in 
> $GISBASE/$LOCATION_NAME/$MAPSET/dbf/. Obviously there is more to it 
> than simply specifying this path.

This is perfect. But don't forget to quote it. See

g.manual v.database
g.manual db.connect
g.manual v.db.connect

http://grass.itc.it/grass51/tutorial/attrib_storage.html#default

I have extended the man page of v.database with DBF example.

> I've done that and still am getting a 
> DBMI protocol error. For the GRASS native format, this should be 
> largely seamless.

Right. You should not need it at all. Please post the complete
error message (please use latest 5.7).

> 3. Select buttons for colors, icons, column name, and field value in 
> d.vect. These seem doable as they exist (at least the colors and icons) 
> in the version of d.vect in d.m.

Volunteer needed...

> 4. A 'clear' button for all the tcltk autogenerated dialogs. I guess 
> this would require a change to g.parser. However, it is a minor but 
> cumulative pain to select long output in the lower window and scroll to 
> delete it--so that I can see what I am doing wrong with the most 
> current version of the command I issue.

Yes, done now in CVS.

> 5. A return of an interactive r.mapcalc. This is a complex tcltk 
> script. Maybe I can even do this as I work on scripts this summer. 
> However, if someone has a better idea, that would be great.

Years ago I have written a sort of r.mapcalc/tcl which
looks like a real calculator:

It's still there:
 #change into 5.3 source code:
 cd grass53src
 #launch it:
 wish src/tcltkgrass/todo/r_mapcalc.tcl

It was never finished due to my very limited tcl/tk skills.

> I sent in several bug reports for GRASS 5.7 to the bug tracker. I can 
> reiterate them to the list if people think it would be good to do so. I 
> just don't want to double people's mail.

Generally it's important to maintain the bug reports separated.
And to find volunteers.

Markus