[GRASS-dev] discussion: replacing ps.map

[Moritz Lennert]

On 28/03/07 06:40, Trevor Wiens wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:22:26 +0100
> Glynn Clements wrote:

> 
>> I do think that we should provide our own facilities for generating
>> PostScript,

+1

>> and that ps.map isn't a particularly good tool. 

In spite of some of its shortcomings, it has always rendered me very 
good service...

>> I would
>> much prefer a set of distinct tools, analogous to the d.* commands,
>> which output specific types of graphics as PostScript, and leave the
>> composing mainly to external tools such as Illustrator or psutils.
> 
> I completely disagree with your point about composition. This is the
> common approach taken, but if one looks at the latest offerings from
> ESRI for professional map creation, the advantage of not having to
> switch formats to something that isn't geographic becomes obvious. The
> level of composition required for professional map composition isn't so
> demanding that if we are going to build functions to do insets,
> legends, etc, that the additional functionality would be that much
> further a stretch as to be unattainable.

I agree with Trevor here. We should offer a composition tool in GRASS, 
even it is quite basic. IMO, it makes the workflow much more obvious for 
most people.

> 
>> My first preference is to enhance the graphics architecture so that
>> d.* commands can generate PostScript. But this requires some
>> fundamental architectural changes which can't happen in the 6.x
>> timeframe.
> 

Well, can't we start a 7.x branch now for experimenting such fundamental 
changes ? I think this is probably the most important (and necessary) 
change to GRASS for the near future and we should go ahead with it. 
(Says he who won't be able to help much in implementing...)

Thierry, I have a very vague memory that you said something about KerGIS 
being able to directly produce vectorized output. Is this true ? How do 
you do this ?

Moritz