[GRASS5] Proposal for GRASS UI roadmap

[Paolo Cavallini]

At 05:49, martedì 08 novembre 2005, Michael Barton has probably written:
> I tend to agree with Martin on this. If QGIS were to embed all the
> functionality and flexibility as GRASS, it would no longer be the fairly
> slick, quick program it is now. The button bar is already getting pretty
> busy (40 buttons with GRASS plugin installed, including 3 pull-downs, vs.
> GRASS's 34).

That's not necessarily true. The plugin mechanism is meant to keep the core 
program sleek, and use the additional functions only when/if needed.
The cluttering of menus is always a problem with such a large program as 
grass, but that can be solved.

> However, QGIS and other similar programs like JumpGIS and Thuban differ
> from programs like GRASS (and ArcInfo or Idrisi) that are focused more on
> research and analysis. I asked about the possibility of merging QGIS and
> GRASS projects some time back. It sounds like that is not in the cards for
> the near future at least, as QGIS has a somewhat different, but equally
> important, set of goals from GRASS.

I do not understand this. We use qgis a lot here. Some of us use it as a 
frontend to qgis, some for grass (especially editing, much more convenient), 
some as a side help for mapserver.
Of course, for heavy analytical work we still use straight grass, mainly from 
the CLI, but that's going to change soon, as the grass shell is already 
available in qgis-cvs.

> It would be nice if we could have one program that could meet all these
> needs, but I'm not optimistic about whether we can (or even should) do that
> at present. Nevertheless, I think it IS important to try to make even
> complex programs like GRASS more accessible to a wider audience. This is an
> important reason that we need to start planning the GRASS UI and not just
> let it happen. QGIS has many nice features and great functionality for some
> things. When improving the GRASS UI, we should look at QGIS closely--and at
> other GIS projects. QT may be a great platform for the future GRASS UI. Or
> it may be GTK, or even a beefed up TclTk. We may even decide on UI that
> looks so much like QGIS that we want to build directly from that platform.

I do not think qgis is a future, it is *present*. I suggest (for what is 
worth) to join the efforts in this direction. E.g., with just a few days of 
work most (if not all) grass modules could be ported.

All the best.
pc
-- 
Paolo Cavallini
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