All I want for Christmas is my ...

[Ronald E. Thomas]

     It's getting to be that time off the year where most good
little Natural Resource Specialists start putting together a
Christmas wish list.  Leaving out the outrageous requests for a
"dragster" workstation, large-size plotter, 70 miles of INTERNET
thicknet to connect directly to the world, I'll confine my list
to GRASS tools that I would find useful.

     A vector/raster coincidence tool, or a vector line/polygon
coincidence tool; that would report the distance (length) of a
vector through a polygon/area, giving individual segments and an
accumulative total.  

     A v.reclass tool, that would be as easy to use as r.reclass. 
This tool would have to be able to recognize islands within
chosen polygons (ie., zero would have to be recognized as a
legitimate attribute), something that the RIM tools currently
miss.

     A /dig_hist directory and associated files, accessible
through v.support, which carry the history of a vector map on to
the /hist directory when rasterized, and "cats" the history of 2
or more files when they are "patched" or otherwise combined in
vector or raster format.  A list of procedures performed, such a
"reclass of XXXXX" or "created by v.patch" would be attached to
the history in addition to being sent to the TITLE field. 

     A beefed up rewrite of the SCS contributed program,
v.report, that fixes peculiarities of the current program; in
particular, its reliance on a 'full' category file (no breaks in
assigned attribute #'s), and its faulty 'perimeter' function.

     An improvement to i.composite that allows it to assign
colors to the range of histogram values of a TM band, rather than
the actual values (an adaption of i.grey.scale?).  ERDAS features
this, and it produces cleaner visuals of imagery.

     I'd try to develop these if I could, but currently the
skills required are beyond my knowledge base and the time needed is
more than what my boss will grant for 'exploration'.  So,
I'll just keep hoping and see what shows up under the TREE!!
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   Ronald Thomas                         ^  ront at meeker.cfnr.colostate.edu
    Natural Resource Spec. (GIS)         ^  
     Resource Management Division        ^   Phone: 303-586-3565  x285
      Rocky Mountain National Park       ^          700-323-7285  (FTS)
       Estes Park, CO  80517             ^ 
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