xgrass vs. "tclgrass"

[Marjorie Larson]

I do not monitor the messages on grassu-list on a regular basis, but
it has been brought to my attention that a discussion on xgrass and
the newer tcl/tk interface work with GRASS has been occuring.  I 
thought perhaps I could add a small bit of information that might
help to clarify an issue or two.

First: the question on "has work on xgrass stopped?"  

The work unit under which the xgrass work was being funded was cut
from the program this year.  Since there is no funding for the work,
we have not been able to keep someone hired to continue development.
So yes, development work on xgrass has stopped.  We are committed 
to continue to support xgrass, so we will be fixing bugs as they are 
reported and we are able.  Unless we come up with a new source of 
funding, however, we will not resume active software development.

What will be the "official" GUI for grass in the future?  

We at CERL have assigned a person to evaluate what is available
in the tcl/tk interface which has been contributed to the user
community by LAS, Inc. in Canada.  We have not yet had a chance to 
fully evaluate the interface.  We plan to work with the Soil 
Conservation Service to evaluate our needs, their needs, the available 
tools, and will try to capture for our users and the user community at 
large the resulting products.

However, everthing is still tied to funding.  CERL does not have any
funding for GUI development work.  We will simply try to work with others
who ARE doing development work.  [Unfortunately, we don't have a fleet
of available programmers to work on whatever is relevant, nor do we
have a basic pool of development money.]

No statement yet on any endorsement or support of one option over 
another - simply a commitment to stay involved in the process.
Meanwhile, we'll continue to maintain an ftp site and encourage
those of you in the GRASS community to continue to share your
new ideas and developments with us and with one another!

Hope this has helped and not hindered the discussion.

Marji Larson
Office of GRASS Integration
USACERL