[GRASS5] usability tweak on OSX

Hamish hamish_nospam at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 7 03:40:42 EDT 2005


Hi,

Here's a window placement tweak that makes things a bit less annoying
on the Mac (and I guess elsewhere too) from the d.m zoom/pan buttons.

It's sort of bending to my preferences of where windows should be placed,
but we should specify something other than just dumping everything in 
the middle of screen. Having to drag the windows to somewhere useful
everytime you start the program is a pain.


Index: d.m.tcl
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/grass/grassrepository/grass6/display/d.m/d.m.tcl,v
retrieving revision 1.41
diff -u -r1.41 d.m.tcl
--- d.m.tcl     1 Apr 2005 23:43:29 -0000       1.41
+++ d.m.tcl     7 Jun 2005 06:07:43 -0000
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@
 ###############################################################################
 proc term {cmd args} {
     global env
-    eval exec -- xterm -e $env(GISBASE)/etc/grass-run.sh $cmd $args &
+    eval exec -- xterm -geometry -50-40 -e $env(GISBASE)/etc/grass-run.sh $cmd $args &
 }



Idea: place the d.zoom instructions term near the bottom right corner.
Currently it seems to always end up right in the middle of the screen 
over the top of the x0 monitor.

It would also be nice to place the grass shell window near the bottom-
left of the screen and the d.m GUI in the top right. I guess Lorenzo's
startup software launches the term & adding "-geometry +0-0" there might
take care of that one. As for placing the d.m GUI near the top right of 
the screen, not really sure, but perhaps use the "place" command?

see the `man X` (7x) GEOMETRY section for more info on -geometry.

Tcl's "place" command:
  http://tcltk.free.fr/man/TkCmd/place.php3
  http://tcllib.sourceforge.net/BWman/BWidget.html#place


So.. do the GUI masters agree?



FWIW, on the Mac with the d.m GUI open I usually put the shell in the
bottom left, the x0 monitor in the top left, the GUI in the top right, 
and "else" in the bottom right of the screen. On Linux I just use the
command line and my window manager remembers where I put things so this
isn't an issue for me there.

Also on the Mac I use the "X11 Focus Follows Mouse" patch that comes 
with Gimp.App to stop the click-to-focus nightmare when running d.zoom 
or d.where from the GUI. This only works when you start GRASS in X11 
mode not OSX mode; I seem to recall someone once showing me where you 
could change this in the Mac user settings, but I forget now. If it 
can be found, it might be nice to add that to Lorenzo's tutorial! This
is what keeps me from using OSX mode. Also nice to mention what the
3-button mouse emulation keys are in the Mac tutorial too!


hmmm. d.m has shortcut keys. I didn't know that. v.digit could use these.


    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-o> {
        Dm::OpenFileBox {}
    }
    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-n> {
        Dm::new
    }
    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-s> {
        Dm::SaveFileBox {}
    }
    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-q> {
        DmPrint::clean;  exit
    }
    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-x> {
        Dm::delete
    }
    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-w> {
        Dm::FileClose {}
    }
    bind . <$keycontrol-Key-p> {
    Dm::print




The NVIZ contol panel could also use some fixing in regard to window
placement. It tends to jump all over the place when you open/close e.g.
the lighting panel.




Hamish




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