[GRASS5] GRASS GUI - platforms

[Michael Barton]

Running 'natively'--or as natively as possible--will make it MUCH easier for
more people to who want to use GRASS to do so. It will also be easier to
learn more of the complexities of GIS and spatial analysis if they can
install it easily and simply run it easily.

TclTk is somewhat easy to work with because it doesn't have to be compiled.
HOWEVER, I now have 3 versions of TclTk on my Mac--the one that comes from
Apple (that GRASS does not use), the X11 version that I prefer, and the aqua
version that Lorenzo Moretti has used to give GRASS an optionally more
Mac-like appearance. Windows users need 2 versions of TclTk because the
version that comes with Cygwin doesn't work with GRASS. (Oh yeah and they
need Cygwin too). Some Linux users need version 8.3 in addition to the
version 8.4 that comes with their system. This is a mess. If we were to go
with TclTk, this would have to be cleaned up. But I don't know if it's
possible.

I also have heard that QT is making an open source version available for
Windows, but don't know the status of that. This is a pretty critical issue,
but perhaps solved already.

As someone else mentioned, GIMP works pretty transparently on my Mac, even
though it runs under X11. So does Inkscape (also GTK I think). Apple gives
away a Mac-specific version of X11, so this is not a problem AFAICT. I've
seen GIMP run on Windows XP and it appears to run natively (ie., no need for
Cygwin or x11 emulation). GTK seems to be widely standard on most Linux
systems too.

Someone also mentioned wxwindows as a platform candidate. I haven't heard of
this. Has anyone else?

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

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton



> From: William Kyngesburye <woklist at kyngchaos.com>
> Reply-To: William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:43:08 -0600
> To: <grass5 at grass.itc.it>, <grassgui at grass.itc.it>
> Subject: Re: [GRASS5] GRASS GUI
> 
> I think the GUI toolkit should run *natively* cross-platform.
> 
> GTK: X11.  That is, on Mac OS X is requires the X11 environment.  I
> saw the beginnings of a native Mac port, but it could take a while.
> I'm not sure how it works on Windows, cygwin?  I think I saw a well
> developed native port.
> 
> Tcl/Tk: X11.  There are native builds of this on Mac and Windows.
> But, when I tried to use that on Mac OS X I ran into conflicts
> between X11 stuff and Mac OS X.  GRASS would have to be completely
> divorced from X11.
> 
> Qt: native from the ground up.  I just started playing with qgis.
>  From the binaries, it's a Mac application (or Windows, or X11),
> though the GUI widgets are a lot like Windows.  I'm trying a build
> from source (so I can update GDAL in it) and maybe there are some
> settings to use some more native versions of things (like the open/
> save dialogs).
> 
> 
> As for a choice of GUI kits, I wonder if would be possible to
> abstract the GUI functions in a GRASS library, and that will use
> whichever GUI kit was built into that copy of GRASS.  It might even
> then be possible to plug binaries of the GRASS GUI library into a
> GRASS binary to switch between GUIs.  Maybe start with Qt and add
> others later.  Just a thought.
> 
> 
> On Nov 14, 2005, at 11:33 PM, Sajith VK wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Tool kit(TK/GTK/QT)
>> -----------------------------
>> Custom application development is very important in
>> GIS. Hence selection of toolkit decides the way in which
>> we can develop custom applications based on GRASS. Now each
>> programmer has his own choice for toolkit. I like Gnome(and uses Gtk),
>> and similarly someone else may like KDE(and use QT).
>> So first a generic outline need to be developed. Later
>> it should be implemented in both Qt and Gtk(atleast). So we
>> can have a base application(say grass) and a set of GUI's
>> (ggrass,kgrass,wxgrass etc). Initially it can be implemented
>> in one toolkit and later extend to all.
>> 
> 
> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
> 
> "History is an illusion caused by the passage of time, and time is an
> illusion caused by the passage of history."
> 
> - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
>