[GRASS-dev] New welcome screen

[Rainer M Krug]

Markus Metz <markus.metz.giswork at gmail.com> writes:

> [moving to a new thread]
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 10:55 PM, Markus Neteler <neteler at osgeo.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Moritz Lennert
>> <mlennert at club.worldonline.be> wrote:
>>> On 21/01/15 19:35, Markus Neteler wrote:
>>>> In my opinion we should not have the location selection dialog at all.
>>>> Revolution!
>>>>
>>>> We should start GRASS right away in latlong like most GIS in the world.
>>>>
>>>> Then let the user open the dialog to change projection if desired from
>>>> inside.
>>>>
>>>> This would avoid a lot of questions right away.
>>>
>>> Please don't do this !
>>
>> OK, now being back from phone to a real keyboard, I can write a few more lines.
>>
>> I am thinking about this issue for seeral years meanwhile (hint: I
>> started in 1993 to use the software, getting stuck at the text start
>> screen not having a manual :-).
>>
>> So my full suggestions are
>> - beautify the actual screen (hence my recent suggestion which is
>> lively discussed here),
>> - optionally (!) allow to start GRASS without welcome/loc/mapset
>> screen but to open it in LatLong as described above. Again, as an
>> option. We could implement that in trunk and see how it goes. All the
>> tools to select locations, projections and such are there.
>>
>>> I find the fact that GRASS does not provide a default
>>> projection system, but forces the user to think about projection from the
>>> start, one of its strengths, both for work and for teaching.
>>
>> On of it strenghts, yes. But I have been teaching GRASS a lot to GIS
>> professionals who got trained on different systems. And many asked
>> "why this screen? why cannot you just start like the other GIS"? And I
>> tend to agree (again: optionally). The point is that we, on the
>> contrary to many other GIS, still have all the control mechanisms in
>> place which avoid that the user mixes projections. So that's all fine.
>>
>> Also in Portland at the FOSS4G conf (where I showcased GRASS GIS 7)
>> people suggested to let 'em get into the system right away. They
>> explained to me that a newcomer wants to see the menu to understand
>> how powerful the system is. But they would get stuck at the welcome
>> screen... Yes, and they don't want to think before they open the
>> program but "just try", out of curiosity.
>
> A suggestion for a compromise:
>
> Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like
> "Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y"

Which would be the last opened mapset or, if opened for the first time,
the demo mapset?

> nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets
>
> Only two buttons: OK, Change
> Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen.

I would add a third button which says "Start in demo location"
to make it easier to return to the demo location after having already
used GRASS GIS - for e.g. running examples and tests of other
applications which use the demo dataset.

>
> The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would
> reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome
> screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-)
>
> Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist,
> create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it
> and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that).

This sounds like a good compromise.

And if then there is a nice QGIS like dialog to create a new location /
mapset including projections, to start GRASS would be much easier.

Thinking of it - a history of recently used mapsets on the welcome
screen, which shows the projection, extent and the file path, is
something which would be really useful.

Cheers,

Rainer


>
> Markus M

-- 
Rainer M. Krug
email: Rainer<at>krugs<dot>de
PGP: 0x0F52F982
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