[GRASS-dev] Re: New location creation and 1x1 boundaries

[Paul Kelly]

Hello Helena
(Cc to dev list with comments about region setting, GUI and g.region)

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007, Helena Mitasova wrote:

[...]
> the problem with this case is that there is no tool to modify the default 
> window
> (except for r.in.gdal -e and you need to  have  the right file to do it)
> so you are stuck with 1x1x1 and it propagates to each new mapset when you 
> create it.
> For old users it is OK because we all know that we need to set the region
> before doing anything and if we find the 1x1x1 DEFAULT_WIND annoying
> we can edit it directly or copy a properly set WIND to DEFAULT_WIND.
> But for new users it can get pretty confusing.
>
> Probably adding an option to g.region to modify the DEFAULT_WIND when
> PERMANENT is your current mapset would solve it along with a message asking
> the user to do that after setting the location from EPSG, or PROJ parameters.

I agree about g.region, and about the startup GUI (currently gis_set.tcl) 
I feel it should allow the user to set the initial region there and then. 
The text-based location creation (etc/set_data) does this and I think the 
graphical startup should too - as you said everything assumes that the 
default region is an attribute of the location that has been explicitly 
set when it was created.

But as the Tcl/Tk GUI interfaces to grass using commands, I think adding 
an option to g.region to set the default region is a pre-requisite for 
this.

Paul

> It would be very convenient if the option included possibility to copy the 
> current
> WIND to DEFAULT_WIND. This would be useful also for situations when the user
> wants to change the DEFAULT_WIND for whatever reason (for example if he
> works with many different regions and wants to have one that covers all of 
> them
> for convenience).
>
> Thanks a lot for looking into this - we are finding all kinds surprising 
> problems
> when working on the book that probably new users have to go through and that
> normally do not bother us,
>
> Helena
>