[GRASS-dev] default vector point symbol

[Hamish]

Markus Neteler wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 12:25:56AM +1200, Hamish wrote:
> > Michael Barton wrote:
> > > > In addition I have a "d.mark x y" script to put a marker on the
> > > > xmon at a given x,y, which is pretty handy, much easier than
> > > > v.in.ascii+d.vect.
> > > >  (just added to addons)
> > > > examples:
> > > >   d.mark 65,30
> > > >   d.mark -m 595968,4918693
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > This sounds real handy. Is it on the WIKI? Maybe we should add it
> > > to the main GRASS distribution.
> > 
> > It's on the wiki addons page. It's just a shortcut & doesn't add
> > anything new so I never considered adding it to the main GRASS CVS.
> > shrug.
> 
> I think that such a functionality is regularly needed. Maybe,
> it could go into d.labels as being close with 'labels' then
> optional and additional reading from stdin? On the other hand,
> we don't have too many d.* modules yet.

It already is "in" d.graph. See the example in the d.graph help page.
The guts of the script is just the 1-liner of that example- d.mark just
rearranges the options to make it a bit simpler+faster to type.
Adding it to d.labels would be an unneeded complication IMO.

I agree that the label system is a bit complicated to use, much like
ps.map is a bit complicated to use. But it works in a predictable and
repeatable way (WYSIWYWant), and it is possible to have the GUI
frontend(s) hide that complication from the user in simple tools. For
command line stuff there is little wrapper scripts like d.mark,
d.stations, and d.varea. I think they differ from other wrapper scripts
like v.centroids, v.dissolve, and r.out.xyz in that it isn't obvious
that for those last 3 that the needed functionality is burried in
v.category, v.extract, and r.stats, whereas for the former you can guess
that d.vect and d.graph should be able to do it, it's just pain to do as
there are so many options to sort past.


2c only,
Hamish