[GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers

[Vaclav Petras]

More improvements for startup window in r64405.

Most notably you don't get error message when starting GRASS for the first
time without a rc file. After clicking OK, you would get a browse window.
Now you just get a warning text in the middle of the window and it is up to
you to read it and press the button. In my opinion, much less annoying
behavior.

The descriptions are now in gray. This is system color, so it should work
with different themes. (This is not true for the things like warning text
or grayed out Mapsets)

I changed the descriptions a little bit but it needs more care. Anybody can
change it now but perhaps we should try to discuss them without diverging
to how to do startup procedure differently. Also there is more strings,
some messages, they might need some revision too. E.g. should there be
numbers in the box titles? And what about the error messages?

The windows issues are just partially fixed. It seems that wxPython is not
determining the wrapping properly. The widgets have the same boundaries in
widget inspector on MS Windows and on Linux. Just the text is wrapped
differently.

The vertical size is bigger then it was before (you can compare at an image
posted earlier [2]). It will get smaller by using smaller banner image.
However, longer descriptions and the error/warning text are making it
bigger. Now the behavior of error/warning text is that it does not occupy
any space unless something is shown. Hopefully it will work on all
platforms (seems to work well on Linux and MS Windows). In theory, the
window could be re-sized by user to be smaller (if screen is small) but I'm
not able to make Location and Mapset lists to allow it. If I set minimal
size, then they actually use it from the beginning and I get unnecessary
small lists. We could get some vertical space by growing wider but then the
Location and Mapset lists are unnecessary wide.

Vaclav

[1] http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64405
[2]
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/attachments/20150121/62aad5af/attachment-0001.png
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/attachment/5183019/1/startup_with_explanations.png
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