[GRASS5] D.zoom behavior

[Glynn Clements]

Michael Barton wrote:

> D.zoom operates in an xterm, going directly to using the left,center,right
> mouse buttons to control a zoom in the current monitor, if you start it with
> d.zoom [mapname] or run d.zoom without an argument if a map has been
> displayed in the current monitor.
> 
> D.zoom goes to the tcltk gui if you run it without arguments and there is no
> map displayed.
> 
> So far so good. 
> 
> However, if you display a map with d.his or d.rgb, d.zoom with no argument
> behaves as if there was no map displayed. That is, it goes to the tcltk gui.
> I can't find any other display commands that behave this way.
> 
> All the rest (d.rast and d.vect, or based on these 2 commands) seem to
> behave like the first way I described.
> 
> This is minor, but a bit odd. As you were talking about the behavior of
> d.zoom a couple weeks back, I thought it might be worth reporting this.

This is essentially the problem which I was describing.

At startup, before it calls G_parser(), it connects to the monitor and
reads the lists of raster and vector maps which are current displayed
on the monitor. It then sets the "answers" fields of the rast= and
vector= options to these lists. Also, if no maps are displayed on the
monitor, it sets the "required" field of the rast= option, and
automatically activates the the -j flag).

It doesn't work in conjunction with d.rgb or d.his because these don't
register the maps with D_add_to_cell_list(). [This is arguably
correct; these programs don't directly display the rasters which they
read; they display data which is generated from them. Zooming the
individual rasters wouldn't produce the correct result.]

There are a number of problems here:

1. The argument-handling logic used by d.zoom is convoluted. And
wrong. E.g. if no maps are displayed, you have to specify rast=
(vector= doesn't suffice). If any vector maps are displayed, the
vector= option is initialised to this list, and "d.zoom rast=..." will
display the vector maps as well.

2. It doesn't recognise anything which isn't either a raster or vector
map, according to D_add_to_{cell,dig}_list(), e.g. displays generated
by d.rgb, d.his. However, if the -j flag is used, it will redraw these
maps by re-executing the commands which were set using
D_add_to_list().

Personally, I think that all of the argument-manipulation logic should
go. The rast= and vector= options should be initialised to NULL, and
the -j switch should be off. After G_parser has been called, it should
check that at least one of rast=, vector= or -j was given, and
generate an error if none are given. If -j was given, it should redraw
the display using the command list; otherwise it should draw the
specified raster and/or vector maps.

IOW, to obtain the existing behaviour when no arguments are given but
maps are displayed, you should have to use "d.zoom -j".

BTW, G_parser() also needs a --no-ui switch. The idea is that
tcltkgrass would always use this switch when running a command from a
dialog generated by --tcltk. If options are required, but the user
failed to specify any using the dialog, the program should generate an
error rather than displaying another dialog.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>