[GRASS-dev] Scale display in GRASS Monitor

[Moritz Lennert]

Markus Neteler wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 04:18:07PM +0100, Glynn Clements wrote:
> ...
>> I can see the point in having a scale printed on paper maps where
>> people actually measure distances on the map using dividers and a
>> ruler. I doubt that people do this with a monitor (dividers probably
>> aren't particularly kind to the surface of the monitor, and d.measure
>> is likely to be easier to use).
> 
> I am still convinced that a map scale is an essential ingredient of
> a map. Since there are much less paper maps nowadays, geographers
> like me (certainly also non-geographers) expect to see a scale
> also in a GIS.
> 
> If you look at data of an area which you don't know, a map scale
> is a great help to better understand the visual representation.
> I also doubt that people start to measure on screen but this was
> not asked at all. It is a great help to immediately understand if you
> zoomed to 1:10000 or 1:1mio (since d.zoom doesn't tell anything about the
> current scale). Especially with vector data, the map scale is often
> not obvious (while it is much easier to grasp with (shaded) DEM).

But this could be provided in form of a barscale, not a numeric scale, or ?

> The idea of using a d.barscale activation switch in gis.m does not
> solve the problem for us command line junkies.

If you're at the command line anyway, what's so difficult in typing 
d.barscale -s ?

Moritz