[GRASS-dev] RE: [GRASS-user] Errors applying color rules and -g flags in r.colors

[Glynn Clements]

Patton, Eric wrote:

> I've updated my cvs to include your latest fix to color_rules.c, and
> while I'm not receiving the error message I did before, there is still
> some puzzling behavior occurring.
> 
> The color tables aspectcolr, evi, ndvi, population, and slope still
> display an all-white raster when invoked with no flags. However,
> applying the -e flag to each of these color tables creates a
> full-color, histogram-equalized color table as requested. I'm using
> the same floating-point raster as I did previously. Is this expected
> given the types of color tables being used? I'm not familiar with what
> 'evi' or 'ndvi' mean and for what types of data they are best suited.

The aspectcolor, population and slope tables only cover positive
values, while the evi and ndvi tables cover the range -1 to 1, so it's
expected that those tables won't work with the data in question.

OTOH, -e maps the range of the data to the range of the tables; the
absolute values used in the tables don't matter.

In general, tables which associate colors with percentages (aspect,
bcyr, byg, byr, elevation, grey, gyr, rainbow, ramp, ryb, ryg and
wave) can be applied to any data, while those which use absolute
values (aspectcolr, curvature, etopo2, evi, ndvi, population, slope,
srtm, and terrain) only make sense for data with certain ranges.

You can get a rough idea of the applicability of a colour table by
reading the corresponding rules file ($GISBASE/etc/colors/<name>). 
E.g. slope is defined as:

	0   255 255 255
	2   255 255   0
	5     0 255   0
	10    0 255 255
	15    0   0 255
	30  255   0 255
	50  255   0   0
	90    0   0   0

This is designed for the slope map generated by r.slope.aspect, where
the value is a slope angle between 0 and 90 degrees.

Similarly, the aspectcolr map:

	0 white
	1 yellow
	90 green
	180 cyan
	270 red
	360 yellow

is designed for the aspect maps produced by r.slope.aspect, where the
value is a heading between 0 and 360 degrees.

[The "aspect" map should probably also use 0-360 rather than 0%-100%;
I'm not sure why it doesn't.]

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>