[GRASS-dev] Holiday updates to NVIZ

[Michael Barton]

Over the last several days, I was able to continue with the NVIZ GUI update.
I also managed to fix a few bugs and hope they stay fixed. Here are the
highlights...

I think I¹ve fixed a bug causing problems with NVIZ in latlon regions when
displaying vector points. At least the points are correctly displayed on my
system and NVIZ doesn¹t crash. There is still the problem with the height
and z-exag
sliders for the surfaces not working properly (at least in some contexts),
but you can at least still  set a reasonable value manually (by typing into
the entries next to the sliders). This may be a C-code issue beyond my
control.

I also got the auto draw toggle checkbox to actually work in most panels.
When it¹s checked, making a change (adding a label or changing a display
parameter) will cause the display to be re-rendered and the new feature
shown. When it¹s not checked, you must press the draw button to re-render
the display. This still needs some work in the volumes panel, but it¹s
working pretty well in the rest of the panels now.

I fixed a bug in the sliders. Previously, they only interacted with the
associated value entry widgets  correctly if they worked backwards (increase
from right to left). Now they work correctly when they increase from left to
right.

I completed updating the GUI for all panels except the animations ones. They
are next. I've gotten rid of several functions that don't work. If someone
wants to resurrect them later, the code is archived of course.

I took out the scale panel. It had no functionality at all. It was just a
set of widgets that didn't do anything. In the docs it is listed as not
implemented. I separated the north arrow and fringe functions into separate
panels that can be called from the new appearance menu. Bob added new code
to make fringe elevation and color selections functional. It would be nice
to be able to select the color of the arrow and north ³N². These change in
different context, but I don¹t know how or why since there are no related
commands in the TclTk code.

Probably some derivative of the arrow code could be used to make a true
scale bar, since the arrow function takes a size  value in map units.

I separated the labels and legend panels, and added a Tk font selection
dialog to each. Now you can use any font recognized by TclTk (though some
styles like italic or underline don¹t work with all font families). Each
panel is called from the appearance menu.

I removed the Œlabel sites¹ panel. In the docs it is listed as not
implemented. It has some related code, but it is not functional. Looking at
the code, it seems to apply to the old sites format. I don't know what it
would take to make it work with current vector formats.

I took out a few non-functional widgets: the clear screen checkbutton on the
main panel and the lower entry in the fringe panel. Neither of these had any
functional commands attached. I kept in the z-coord slider for the cutting
planes. It doesn't seem to do anything, but it has code attached. Maybe
someone else could look at it. I¹m not sure what it is supposed to do, so am
not sure what is needed to fix it.

I¹ve put some screenshots of each redesigned NVIZ panel, with example visual
display on my website at
<http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton/files/nviz_screenshots/>. Maybe someone
can use these to update the NVIZ help.

Michael

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton


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