Future direction (and a rant).

[Michel Wurtz - ENGEES/CEREG]

Angus Carr wrote:
> I think a radical redesign is required, personally. I do like the ideas
> behind tcl/tkgrass, but I have never got it working, despite a couple of
> efforts. It's not that I don't know how to get things working, it just
> hasn't been worth my time, and it has always been slightly awkward to
> me.

I agree with you to a certain extent : we need a better visualisation
tool, and it should also run under Windows.  I like tcl/tk too, but I
think that the graphical low level should be done with something (C, C++ ?)
more efficient, preferably with some GPL lib (gtk+ ?).

BTW, some others things that Grass lacks (compared to Arc/Info or ArcView) :

- a better management of vector (+site +area) attributes : multiples
atts, ease to use one of them for determining the symbology, etc...
- a good link to rdbms software (work seems in progress)
- a better cartographic output tool (ps.map is a real pain !)
- maybe a graphic scripting tool (flowchart with icons for files and
commands) that generates (and display old) shell scripts

> my personal pet idea is to change the system a little to allow GRASS
> commands and video stuff and text stuff to pass down sockets, and then
> decouple the display from the processing machine. This is of course a
> basically silly idea, but I like it.

But it's exactly what X11 does : the program runs on one computer,
and the display window on another :-)  So why not use the same idea ?

-- 
Michel Wurtz    ENGEES - CEREG
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