[GRASS5] Re: [GRASSLIST:10276] New release candidate 3 of GIS Manager 2

[Trevor Wiens]

Michael,

I'll add my opinion on this zoom question. BTW, the futher revisions to
the new GIS Manager look good. Great stuff.

I would suggest that rather than having a zoom in tool and a zoom out
tool that there is a zoom tool. Drawing a rectangle to zoom in and
right clicking to zoom out. This is similar to many drawing programs
I've used and is relatively intuitive. If we are concerned about people
with inadequate numbers of mouse buttons then replace the right click
to zoom out with holding down ALT and left clicking to zoom out. This
too is relatively intuitive. 

It would be even more desirable to have a command key option so that
the zoom tool also pans. For instance holding down CTRL changes the
cursor to a hand and click and drag to pan. This may not be obvious to
new users, but once discovered, it would be used all the time because
it is much easier and quicker.

Perhaps my most radical suggestion is why not always have a tool chosen
like with the GIMP. There is little point to having a cursor that can
trace around the screen but not do anything but display its location.
Instead having a push button style tool bar for Tools and changing the
displayed cursor depending on the tool selected provides easier and
more efficient use. Thus when a new monitor is opened the default tool
is the zoom / pan tool (depending on held keys). Thus the cursor would
be a magnifying glass but would change to hand if in pan mode. If the
query tool was selected the cursor would change to an point with a
question mark, for instance. In this way no unnecessary mouse movement
is needed. I understand that this would be a significant change and
might be a bit more difficult for naive users, but GRASS isn't QGIS. It
is a serious tool for serious users. I'm not saying we should make it
difficult, but making it more efficient for users once they understand
how to use it is highly desirable. 

T
-- 
Trevor Wiens 
twiens at interbaun.com

The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same 
level of thinking we were at when we created them. 
(Albert Einstein)