[GRASS5] Ps.map wish/question

[Michael Barton]

Maybe I missed it in my cursory look at the ps.map docs, but it seems like
some d.* command options are a subset of the ps.map commands. I assume that
people using ps.map would continue to use the richer ps.map commands (i.e.,
not replace ps.map commands, but have ps.map also recognize some d.*
commands). 

I was thinking that if ps.map also would read relevant d.* commands it would
be more easily scriptable.

Michael
______________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
USA

voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton


> From: Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
> Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 12:18:08 +0100
> To: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>
> Cc: grass5 developers list <grass5 at grass.itc.it>
> Subject: Re: [GRASS5] Ps.map wish/question
> 
> 
> Michael Barton wrote:
> 
>> I haven?t used ps.map. It seems like a very useful module, but one that is
>> fairly complex to use. While looking though the docs, however, it became
>> apparent that it performs the same kind of display functions (to
>> paper/postscript file) as many of the d.* modules do (to the display
>> monitor)--and does a number of other special functions like setting paper
>> size and margins of course. However, it uses a slightly different syntax to
>> perform equivalent functions. E.g., rast [mapname] for ps.map vs. d.rast
>> [mapname] for screen display.
>> 
>> This led me wonder if it would be difficult to have ps.map accept as an
>> alternative syntax, the d.* commands for which it has equivalent functions.
>> D.vect (vareas, vlines, vpoints), d.rast (rast), d.barscale (scalebar),
>> d.grid (grid or geogrid) seem easily apparent. There might be reasonably
>> straightforward translation for additional d.* commands like d.frame and
>> d.graph also.
>> 
>> If this could be done, then either a set of normal GRASS commands?or even
>> nicer, the file produced by d.save?could be piped to ps.map to make nice
>> postscript output.
>> 
>> How feasible would this be?
> 
> It would be simple enough to define aliases for existing ps.map
> commands. However, users would probably be confused by the significant
> differences between the ps.map commands and their d.* counterparts.
> 
> -- 
> Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>