[GRASS-dev] GUI toolkits [-> ps.map CMYK]

[Hamish]

> I can't even begin to calculate the number of hours I've spent f***ing
> around with labels and colours in drawing programs because the output
> from the GIS programs was so bad. In the realm of free software,
> generating a quality map is similarly difficult if not worse.

ps.map is a pain as you usually need to use the trial & error method.
Results are consistent and (hopefully) as expected, however, which is a
major plus. Hopefully in the future Jachym's g-ps.map (or GUI equivalent)
will make ps.map just a behind-the-scenes engine for generating the
plots.

FWIW, I think ps.map output is just wonderful once you get the hang of it.


> psmap is not bad, but it doesn't do process colours, so it can't be
> used for publishing without extra processing.

I'll take a patch for a CMYK flag.

I thought that some months ago Glynn outlined what needed to happen
(level 3 PS?), but I can't find the message now. However,
  http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grassuser/2003-October/010519.html
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK


The other thing that really needs to happen with ps.map is for all
decorations to accept inches from the top-left of the page or percentage
of the map window (from bottom-left) placement coordinates.

And before anyone suggests it, I think it a very bad idea to try and do
metric values for ps.map placement coordinates. PostScript lives in a
world of inches (font size of 10 is exactly 10/72") and C doesn't handle
unit meta-data well. The place for this is in the GUI front-end which can
translate things into inches for ps.map. Too much potential for bugs
otherwise.

Another long standing bug in ps.map is the incorrect scale calculation
for lat/lon locations.



Hamish