[GRASS5] New GIS Manager version

[Otto Dassau]

Am Freitag, 16. September 2005 03:16 schrieb Michael Barton:
> I¹ve just committed a fairly major update to the GIS Manager to the cvs for
> GRASS 6.1.

Hi Michael,

I tested some of the new features in the d.m and like it very much. Thanks a 
lot for your work!

> It is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But it still has a number of
> new features that I hope will continue to make the many functions of GRASS
> more accessible. I¹ve also posted it to my website at
>
> <http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton/files/grass_gismgr/>
>
> The file is GIS_manager050912.tgz
>
> It includes a replacement $GISBASE/etc/dm directory with all files and a
> new script, d.out.file, for the $GISBASE/scripts directory.
>
> One of the main features of the GIS Manager update is that all major
> display functions are now GIS Manager layers with options panels. This
> makes them much easier to manipulate AND to save in workspaces. All options
> panels now have integrated help buttons. 

This is a great idea, and it works well, but I think another button maybe with 
a simple question mark and not the green grass logo on it would be more 
intuitive. I know, there is already a similar button to query maps. So maybe 
a button with an "i" for information would make sense?

> I also added a print to default 
> printer via lpr in the file menu. This lets you print what you see on the
> screen (assuming your default printer is configured correctly). 

Here I get following error message:
lpr: error - unable to access "print.png" - No such file or directory

there was no file print.png in the current directory or on my machine... 

> New updates 
> to ps.map recently committed to the cvs provide another way to get nice
> printed output. Note that the printer icon remains a link to print ONLY
> some raster, vector, and label files via ps.map.
>
> The new format made the old ³display² menu redundant and it has been
> removed (although all modules and their TclTk interactive dialogs are still
> available from the command line).  This led to a little rearrangement of
> the menu structure. Several items have moved to file: primarily gis file
> management functions (this was a suggestion a long time back). 

> The GIS menu  (which some people didn¹t like) has changed to a configuration 
> menu. 

good idea

> Slope  
> arrows in raster cells moved to raster/terrain and histograms moved to
> image/reports and stats. The remaining entries from the old display menu
> that are not in other locations or GIS Manager layers are primarily for
> programming (d.linegraph).

I tested some buttons. 

RGB HIS button: 

- When I only choose 2 maps on the command line normally you get a message 
like:  ERROR: Required parameter <blue> not set:
- using d.m you get a error message "child process exited abnormally" that 
nobody understands.

Maybe in this context I find it difficult to use the interactive menus, 
because you do not know, which parameter or map is needed and which is 
optional. On the command line you get an error message that tells you, if you 
missed a parameter or map name, but using the interactive menus, you get 
mistakable error message as described above.

Maybe it would be helpfull to mark parameters that have to be set. And it 
would be very helpful if the error messages are understandable.
 
> The GIS Manager is somewhat more compact, with a new arrangement of
> functions: monitor control down the left side, general display controls and
> tools on the top toolbar and layers on bottom toolbar. 

I like this a lot. To me the new arrangement makes sense! 

> I¹ve also added 
> color. Grey is OK for the eyes, but grey on grey is hard to see and pretty
> dull. Grass is green, so the GIS Manager is green.

as mentioned before, would it be possible to offer the user to change the 
color? I think it is a matter of taste, but not everybody will like this, I 
guess. For me it looks a bit too flashy.

> The new script (d.out.file) replaces and expands d.out.png. It makes it
> easy to save the current display monitor to various graphic file formats
> (along with PNG and PNM, it adds JPEG, TIF, and BMP with compression
> options for PNG and JPEG). It uses the GRASS PNG driver and gdal because
> they come with all GRASS installations. Other utilities (e.g., netpbm and
> imagemagick) have more options but are not required for a GRASS
> installation.

The script is in the CVS but not added to the Makefile, so it is not copied 
during the make install command.

> Let me know what works and what doesn¹t. Several members of the developers
> list have helped me test it pretty thoroughly, but I probably missed
> something somewhere.

it is really fun playing around with the display manager and the new 
arrangement of tools make it more intuitive, at least for me. 

thanks a lot
   Otto