[GRASS-dev] Re: #339: d.mon doesn't work (WinGrass commandline)

[Moritz Lennert]

On 20/10/08 09:44, Paul Kelly wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008, Glynn Clements wrote:
> 
>> Except that d.mon isn't specific to XDRIVER, nor is the lack of
>> monitors on Windows.
>>
>> And AFAICT, the legacy display architecture was originally designed
>> for Tektronix 41xx (and similar) terminals; X support came later.
> 
> Yes I think so too - IIRC in the 1987 GRASS promotional video you see an 
> example of GRASS being used with a standalone graphics terminal.
> 
> How about for GRASS 7 on all platforms, turning d.mon into a script that 
> runs an image display program that initialises the image it displays 
> from GRASS_PNGFILE and automatically refreshes the display when the file 
> is modified? If the display program was simple (I guess a very simple 
> cross-platform PNG viewer might not be too difficult to implement?) it 
> could be included in the GRASS source code and would be convenient for 
> people to use all their favourite non-interactive d.* commands without 
> having to run the GUI.

Just to add my 2 cents: I've successfully used gqview [1] in that 
manner, i.e. leaving it open and displaying map.png. It automatically 
updates the images when it changes. I bet there must be several other 
programs that do the same, so I don't think we really need to program 
anything. Maybe just offer a list of programs that users might consider.

Moritz

[1] http://gqview.sourceforge.net/