startup GUI - was Re: [GRASS5] New gui.tcl generic user interface

[Michael Barton]

One issue that needs to be addressed are the tools to create a location.

G.setproj (the module that people see when they want to create a new
location) only works in interactive xterminal mode.

G.proj will create a new location with new projection parameters, but only
if compiled with OGR. Is OGR required for ALL GRASS compilation? If so, we
could work with g.proj. If OGR is not a basic GRASS requirement, then this
would be problematic.

I'd love to see any work to date for updating the GRASS startup. I've made 2
starts recently. The first was an attempt to simply update the existing
startup to current TclTk tools, with the idea that we could move on from
there. This got  to be such a pain, that I decided to scrap that and start
from scratch. I had it partly functioning, but apparently lost the code when
my laptop went in for repairs. Once, I finish with debugging gism2--close I
hope--I'll make this a top priority.

Maybe Cedric and I could collaborate as his knowledge of TclTk seems quite a
bit more sophisticated than mine. If I go with g.proj, I might need some
help in appropriately creating either a wkt or proj statement.

More importantly, WHICH of the many files of projection/datum parameters get
used in setting up a location? There are all kinds of project/datum related
files in $GISBASE/etc. Probably this has been brought up before, but they
should all be put into a $GISBASE/projection directory and organized in some
coherent way. If we no longer use some of them, they should probably be
removed.

Cheers
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: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:05:18 +0100
> To: <grass5 at grass.itc.it>
> Subject: startup GUI - was Re: [GRASS5] New gui.tcl generic user interface
> 
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 02:51:49PM -0500, Helena Mitasova wrote:
>> 
>>>>> 3) rewriting the GRASS startup GUI.
>>>> 
>>>> esp. the create-new-location text screens.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> YES!
>> 
>> we have had this discussion couple times already and everybody agrees
>> that the create-new-location text interface is awful. But it usually
>> dies at this point as other, more important things take the focus away.
>> Markus got pretty close by using a temporary location for user to start
>> with and then it was modified for the actual location.
>> Markus, do you still have it and should we start from there or has
>> somebody a better idea how to do it?
> 
> The sad story is that Justin had a nice startup GUI READY in 2000
> (I have seen it at HPCC). But he moved to Canada, the code remained there
> and got apparently lost.
> 
>> After 10 years we now have the sites visualization based on attributes
>> back in GRASS-nviz thanks to Massimo, maybe the startup new location
>> interface can be done now too. I don't know enough about GUI to do
>> something substantial but I can help at least with testing,
> 
> Maybe can get Cedric interested? It hopefully doesn't take another
> 10 years to get a nicer startup screen.
> 
> things to do there
> - make a nice list of projections and datums (maybe like QGIS, in a DB?
>   Or *the* DB from QGIS?)
> - have easy-to-edit form for the coordinates and stuff
> - functional navigation in the directory tree to find the
>   grass database
> 
> Markus
>