[GRASS5] Re: [GRASSLIST:9577] Re: icons

[Hamish]

[moved to grass5]

> Your ideas about where to put and how to scan for icons sound good.
> Would it be a good idea to scan 1) current mapset, 2) PERMANENT in the
> current location, and 3) $GISBASE/etc/symbol?

It's not my idea, it's what the library is already set up to do.
d.vect is currently breaking that functionality.

I think "g.list icon" should be updated too. (or changed to g.list
symbol)

> I can't comment on the C-code for d.vect, but the ideas seems fine.
> Just having icon_files() scan the current mapset (and maybe
> PERMANENT?) seems the simplest instead of adding a flag.

Code is just details, creating & sticking to a sound design is the hard part.
IMO it should be handled by library fns in the same manner as any other
gis element. The extra directory complicates a simple add.
At least a G_list_icons() or something that returns a tokenized char array 
listing all available icon files, adapted from d.vect's icon_files().

> An additional possibility (along with scanning mapset) would be to
> have an environmental variable (SYMBOL_LOCATION) for the system-wide
> symbol set that would be default set to $GISBASE/etc/symbol, but could
> be set to another custom location in .grassrc6 or with g.gisenv. Of
> course, I have no idea how easy/difficult this all would be.

I'd prefer to keep these to a minimum unless there's a really good
reason. They are non-intuitive and are useless without good
centralized documentation. Having said that, I do see the logic in
keeping only one set of symbols around instead of copying them to every
location you work with.


Hamish