[GRASS5] show columns button question

[Michael Barton]

Markus had what I think is a great idea--to make a button in the vector
panel of the GIS Manager that uses v.info -c to display vector column names.
This would be helpful to people using the vector, chart, and thematic
panels. It seemed like a simple thing until I tried to do it and ran into a
number of problems, described below.

I've tried all the stuff that I actually KNOW how to do (a smallish subset
of TclTk's potential) and am now left with a long bout of trial and error to
make this work. If anyone can get to the heart of the matter and get it
running, I'm happy to add it to all 3 vector-related panels.

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

------ Forwarded Message
> From: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:04:11 +0200
> To: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>
> Subject: Re: GIS manager comment
> 
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 09:57:11AM -0700, Michael Barton wrote:
>> Thanks Markus. I'm glad you like it.
>> 
>> I really liked your idea about a button to list column names...so much that
>> I just burned the past hour trying to make it work (instead of doing what I
>> should have been doing). It has proved surprisingly intractable.
>> 
>> The main difficulty is that I can't seem to get the name of the vector map.
>> There is a variable set when you select a map opt(id,map). However, it acts
>> like it is empty when I try to do a variable substitution $opt($id,map).
>> This same substitution works fine in other parts of the vector.tcl script,
>> so I'm baffled as to why it comes up empty here. I've tried all kinds of
>> permutations to no avail at the moment.
>> 
>> The second issue is that the best way to display the column names is in a
>> separate terminal window that goes away when you hit return. So far,
>> however, I can get it to come up in a separate terminal window...that goes
>> away immediately before you can read it.
> 
> maybe 
>  etc/grass-run.sh
> could be used.
> 
>> I can send it to the main GRASS
>> terminal, but this is less desirable.
> 
> That's true.
> 
>> If you have any suggestions, I'm happy to implement it in the vector,
>> thematic charts, and thematic map panels.
> 
> Maybe a Tcl expert can help, I don't know much about this language.
> 
> Good luck & thanks
>  
> Markus
> 
>> 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: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
>>> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 17:48:03 +0200
>>> To: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>
>>> Subject: GIS manager comment
>>> 
>>> Michael,
>>> 
>>> after a while I recompiled GRASS and discovered the nicely
>>> updated GIS manager. Congratulations - it's looking really
>>> great now!
>>> 
>>> I have a small wish, derived from the new nice help
>>> buttons. Apparently you can launch any command (may be
>>> wrong). May I ask you to add a button in the vector
>>> menu right from
>>>  "attribute col for labels" which executes
>>>  
>>>   v.info -c vectormap
>>> in a terminal? Then one could easily find out the names
>>> of the available attribute columns.
>>> 
>>> Thanks for your work!
>>> 
>>>  Markus
>>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Markus Neteler     <neteler itc it>       http://mpa.itc.it
> ITC-irst -  Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
> MPBA - Predictive Models for Biol. & Environ. Data Analysis
> Via Sommarive, 18        -       38050 Povo (Trento), Italy

------ End of Forwarded Message