[GRASS-dev] 'Stop' button in the GUI: what is it supposed to do and does that work ?

[Moritz Lennert]

Hi all,

During classes (working in a lab with Debian testing machines), I often 
have the problem that students push the 'Stop' button in a module GUI 
window, thinking that this will end the command. This can happen, for 
example, when they launch a raster command without having adjusted the 
region, leading to an enormous amount of cells and thus to very long 
running times.

However, pushing the button stops only the interaction between the 
command and the GUI, but not the underlying process. I have thus seen 
student with 3 v.to.rast processes running in the background which they 
thought they had stopped.

Could someone explain to me what the exact idea behind this stop button 
is and how it should work / be used ? And maybe we should think about 
whether it is a good idea to give the user the impression that they can 
actually stop the process.

Moritz