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

[Moritz Lennert]

On 28/01/15 19:59, Vaclav Petras wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:29 PM, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus at gmail.com
> <mailto:wenzeslaus at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus at gmail.com
>     <mailto: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.
>
>
> Done in r64345.
>
> Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on
> small screens.
>
> Please, read the previous message and commit message for a discussion
> and description.

Generally, I like what I see, but I also have to admit that personally, 
and apparently contrary to many others, I do not really see as much need 
to change much in the GRASS startup.

I just have two reactions:

"Location represents a project."

I'm not sure I like this restriction to location=project. For my part I 
often use location=projection and mapset=project, but this depends. I'm 
afraid that such a semantic limitation in the startup screen will 
strongly influence users to go into just one direction...

On 22/01/15 05:29, Vaclav Petras wrote:> A "Skip" button can be added 
next to Start button, once implemented. I
 > think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate.

I'm very strongly opposed to this idea. You can be sure that many people 
will abuse this horribly without knowing what they are doing. In my 
eyes, GRASS should continue to impose a choice of projection system 
before working with data.

If we want to give people the opportunity to test GRASS, I prefer the 
option of a button that downloads and unpacks a very light demo location.

Moritz