[GRASS translations] What's a project in GRASS?

[Otto Dassau]

Hi,

On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:43:56 +0000
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com> wrote:

> 
> dottorando wrote:
> 
> > For you and considering the whole concept of 'location' in GRASS, is it 
> > closer to 'project' or to 'place'?
> 
> Place.
> 
> > German people have translated it just as 'Project' or 'Location Project' 
> > as Otto said.
> 
> "Project" amounts to a change in terminology, not a translation.
> 
> While you could argue that a "location" corresponds to a "project", if
> we had wanted to use the term "project", we would have done.
> 
> > French people have translated as 'Secteur' that is, closer 
> > to place. We, spaniards, don't know, although I strongly prefer the concept 
> > of project. The "rest of the world"?
> 
> It depends upon whether you feel that a translation should simply be a
> translation, or whether it's appropriate to change any English terms
> which you disagree with, then translate the changed terms.


>From my point of view "location" and "mapset" are proper names for sth. 
(area, projection definition,group of mapsets etc.) as Glynn described below.
That's maybe the problem and makes it impossible to simply translate it. 

Maybe a solution would be to keep the english terms (location and mapset)
as proper names and add a paragraph in documents, where you try to define
exactly in your language what a location and a mapset is. This could be
translated then.
 
BTW: It might be useful to find an agreement on how to use
location and mapset in documents, thinking that almost every tutorial and its
translation try to describe locations and mapsets in a different way again.

just another idea... :-)

regards,
 Otto

> > While I wrote this message, I was looking for something and I found it. I 
> > want to show to everybody (also to myself) how wiki defines the concepts 
> > of 'location' an 'mapset' :)
> >
http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/Gis_Concepts#How_a_GRASS_project_is_organized
> 
> Regarding the sentence:
> 
> 	A location is a GRASS project consisting of an area,
> 	projection definition (or unprojected), a grouping of mapsets,
> 	all with the same projection settings. A location is a
> 	subdirectory of the GRASS database.
> 
> I wouldn't have used the term "project" here, but simply written:
> 
> 	A location consists of an area, projection definition (or
> 	unprojected), a grouping of mapsets, all with the same
> 	projection settings. A location is a subdirectory of the GRASS
> 	database.
> 
> A user could just as easily have a separate database directory for
> each project. In fact, if a project is likely to consist of data in
> multiple projections, it would probably better to have a separate
> database directory for the project.
> 
> The only significant difference between having two locations in the
> same database or in separate databases is that there are a small
> number of commands (e.g. r.proj, v.proj, i.rectify) which can access
> data from a different location directory within the same database
> directory, but commands never access data from outside the current
> database directory.
> 
> IOW, although any given project usually involves data from a single
> location, it can use data from more than one location. In that sense,
> it isn't accurate to consider a project as equivalent to a location. 
> OTOH, if you rarely use data from outside the current location
> directory, it's common to have a single database directory containing
> all of your location directories, so it isn't accurate to consider a
> project as equivalent to a database directory either.
> 
> In summary, GRASS itself has no notion of a project, it's purely a
> matter of the user's perception.
> 


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