To awk is human, to GUI divine ...?

[Chris W Skelly]

Hi Peoples,

Just to add my 2cents...

Bill wrote in responce to comments that GRASS should follow the lead of
commercial products...
> 
>      I don't think that I agree with these guys.  GRASS has always had the
> philosophy of being for "installations with more talent than money".  That,
> after all, is the value of distributing source code - if it doesn't do what
> you want, then you are free to fix it.

Yes, but the point I think the others were making was that if there
are two ways to do something lets go the route best for the user, not
the programmer. Having said that...if I had to make a decision on where
to put GRASS programmer time at this point it would _not_ be on
"desk top" GUIs. It would 98% on analysis functionality. If I want a
neato-jiffy point click and gee look at the diolog box I will buy
a PC commercial product, eg MAPINFO. GRASS is not IMHO designed to
impress computerphobic managers, its for researchers and people who
know enough about what they want that they might want to tinker with
the code.

A tough balance between getting the job done and being kind to the
user...I know which way I went when there was a job to be done...[B


>      And, as for students, I recall the old adage wherein one can give a
> man a fish to take care of his hunger, or one can teach a man to fish, and
> he will never go hungry again.

I am afraid I have to concur. Unless the student can "play" with a
routine at code level, it is tough or impossible to ever get that 
intuitive feel for spatial analysis. On that vein, the easier you make
things for the student the less is learned --- that is if the object
is for them to understand the tool.

chris skelly