[GRASS-dev] GSoC 2014: GRAS GIS Web UI

[Vaclav Petras]

Hi Rashad,

web GRASS is certainly something we need and I'm very excited about that.
But there are several things which should be considered to make this
project successful.

First, there is already one (desktop) GUI. Do we want to have (an maintain)
another GUI? Is there a possibility to share the code between the desktop
and web GUI?  What about limiting the functionality of the web GUI to
minimum, so that there will not much code to maintain and (as defined)
nothing to add?

Second, if we would decide to go the way of the full GUI (which resembles
current wxGUI), wouldn't be better to use something like GTK+ GDK Broadway
(1) to just reuse the desktop GUI on web, or to reuse web GUI on desktop
(some web view or browser with local web pages and processes)? Although
GTK+ and some wxWidgets applications can run with Broadway backend,
wxPython, and especially GRASS is still far from running that way. However,
there are some (perhaps even more interesting) alternatives such as Ulteo
and noVNC. And I'm wondering what rollapp.com is using.

Third, the GUI is not the only part. The GUI is supposed to be a part of
some server/cloud infrastructure. You need to upload data, sign in users...
And also we are not sure what are the security issues of using GRASS on
server with unlimited access (i.e. you can run anything you want as opposed
to predefined processes in WPS).

Fourth, the processing on server could be also invoked from a desktop GUI.
This would require user to install the desktop GUI but the processing part
would be placed on server. This is just another option.

Fifth, the choice of the GUI framework is important. We don't want to tight
this to some project which will not be here in few years. Wt has nice
examples and your (Rashad's) experience is big plus. But there is many
others such as Dabo and some of them might be better for us since they are
using Python, so we could share some code with wxGUI. Results on mobile
platforms must be evaluated, too.

And finally, a sustainability of the new web GUI must be considered. What
will happen after the GSoC? There already were several GRASS web interfaces
starting with GRASSLinks in 1995 and also we have some web sites using
GRASS in background but they are not general GRASS GUI (e.g.
http://www.gapserve.ncsu.edu/segap/segap/). Minimizing duplication with the
desktop GUI seems crucial and merging this to GRASS and developing other
infrastructure, too.

I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by all of these considerations but I
was thinking about this topic for some time, so I collected some ideas and
now is the time to share them.

Vaclav

PS: I just saw your video, congratulations, it looks good and responsive.
Is the code somewhere online?



On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 4:28 AM, Rashad M <mohammedrashadkm at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I would like to check with grass-devs about the possibility of having a
> web version of GRASS GIS as a part of SoC 2014. I had done some behind the
> scenes work for web version using C++ web toolkit Wt[1]. This involves
> running a grass modules online just like you do on Desktop with a UI that
> resembles that of wxGUI. I had been in touch with one of my juniors in my
> lab and he is interested to work on it. I could mentor this project as I
> had experience with Wt, GRASS and GSoC. I hope this web version will be
> very useful in both users and developers.
>
> Comments and suggestions are most welcomed.
>
> [1] http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt
>
> --
> Regards,
>    Rashad
>
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> grass-dev at lists.osgeo.org
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>
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