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

[Yann Chemin]

On 22 January 2015 at 11:30, Michael Barton <Michael.Barton at asu.edu> wrote:

>
>  This is a good start. Here are some suggestions for simplifying the text
> even more.
>
>  =================================
>
>  [Select GRASS GIS database directory]
>
>  (make this a button rather than a text box with browse; no need to show
> this path)
>
>  "A GRASS GIS database directory contains one or more Locations”
>
>  (no need to say that you can have more than one GISDBASE)
>
>  =================================
>
>  "All GIS data in a Location directory are in the same coordinate
> reference system (projection). Locations contain Mapsets.”
>
>  OR
>
>  "All GIS data in a Location directory are in the same spatial
> projection. Locations contain one or more Mapsets.”
>
>  (Locations are not necessarily related to ‘projects’. Mine are very much
> projection based—e.g., I have a single latlon Location for ALL my latlon
> data regardless of which research project it is used for. Do we need to say
> “coordinate reference system (projection)”? Doesn’t just “projection” cover
> it well enough? These are directories, so it might help to say this.)
>
>   =================================
>
>  "A Mapset contains GIS data. Every Location automatically has one Mapset
> named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location."
>
>  (A Mapset may or may not relate to one task; that depends on the user.
> Some of mine do and some don’t. The ‘common data’ in PERMANENT is not
> really important except in a multi-user setup, which is not what most
> people use today. Mapsets are directories too, but as someone mentioned,
> maybe we shouldn’t stress this in case someone tries to move stuff around
> in a mapset. On the other hand, and unlike Arc, entire Locations and entire
> Mapsets CAN be moved without any harm).
>
>  =================================
>
>
>  I would not mess with trying to start GRASS without the standard
> database/location/mapset that we have now in 7.0 until we have some time to
> think it through and talk about it some. One easy to do thing would be to
> add a button to this screen (instead of inside the location wizard only) to
> create a latlon region and open GRASS in its PERMANENT mapset. But I’m not
> even sure that this is a good way to go yet.
>

Thus the idea of a starting flag "grass -b" to get a lat/long region and
open a PERMANENT mapset. The whole thing can be a /tmp/random_name.

>
>  Michael
>
>
>  On Jan 21, 2015, at 9:36 PM, grass-dev-request at lists.osgeo.org wrote:
>
>  *From: *Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus at gmail.com>
>  *To: *GRASS developers list <grass-dev at lists.osgeo.org>
>  *Date: *January 21, 2015 at 9:35:40 PM MST
>  *Subject: **Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for
> newcomers*
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>  To satisfy everybody, I suggest to provide a buttons with something
>> like "Take me to LL", "Take me to default location" and "Take me to XY".
>> What do you think about that?
>>
>> But the real improvement should be the messages which would guide you
>> through the process.
>>
>
> So, here is screenshot and diff for new layout of the window together the
> description what the things are useful for. The descriptions can be easily
> changed, they are wrapped texts, so they will work well with translations.
> So, feel free to suggest different ones. We can also make them "gray" as
> suggested earlier.
>
>  I used GRASS Location and Location. I though that GRASS could help to
> emphasize that it is something GRASS-related and few people were using
> Location and Mapset with capital letter which could say that it is a
> something like files format or spatial database name. I aimed to address
> the things I considered confusing. I'm not sure about the GRASS GIS data
> directory as I mentioned earlier.
>
>  Now it is higher then the old one but with removal of the image it will
> be smaller. If a small-enough image is used, it could be the same. I would
> like to not include the image to have more space for the error messages
> (currently one line between GISDBASE and Location boxes), so messages can
> be longer and perhaps some what to do next tips can be shown as well. The
> position of this text can/should be changed, now middle of the window
> (usually these are at the bottom or at the top). However, without image it
> might be actually a little boring.
>
>  I reorganized the buttons to manage the (list of) Locations and (list
> of) Mapsets, so now it looks like any other lists, e.g. in Simple Layer
> Manager or in Cartographic Composer. In future we can add buttons, for
> example unpack a zipped location or download sample datasets in case of
> Locations and show existing maps button in case of Mapsets.
>
>  A "Skip" button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I
> think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate.
>
> http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2015-January/073268.html
> http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2015-January/073266.html
>   <startup_with_explanations.diff><startup_with_explanations.png>
>
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