[GRASS-dev] GUI toolkits

[Paolo Cavallini]

At 05:51, domenica 28 maggio 2006, Trevor Wiens has probably written:

> 1. QGIS and GRASS have different goals and target different audiences.
> Thus abandoning a GRASS specific GUI reduces the ability of GRASS
> developers to guide and develop the tools they want and need.

I do not understand this. GRASS is very much about powerful GIS analyses. QGIS 
is especially aimed at geobrowsing. The integration of the two makes the easy 
yet powerful freeGIS most user (actual and potential) want and need.

> 2. GRASS is primarily written in C so if we want to use a compiled
> language, C would be the natural choice.

Right, but do you think separating analysis (in C) from GUI (in C++/Qt) would 
cause problems?

> 3. C++ would reduce the number of contributors. Establishing a nice
> interpreted environment could increase the ease of development for
> future modules.

Tapping from the relatively large and very active developer base of QGIS 
actually increases the number of contributors, leaving grass developers to 
concentrate on analysis (see e.g. recent discussions on rater data format, 
and the TODO list on vectors sent by Radim) rather than reinventing the 
wheel.

> Personally, I use QGIS as viewer of shapefiles or PostGIS files, but not
> for anything else; I prefer GRASS.

GIS is very much about interoperability, so being able to use shapefiles and 
postgis and grass in the same environment is a big plus. Have you tried e.g. 
printing a simple map recently?

All the best.
pc
-- 
Paolo Cavallini
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