[GRASSLIST:5299] Re: using GRASS in Emacs environment

[Glynn Clements]

SATO Masaei wrote:

> I began to use GRASS GIS on Linux recently. I'm using some scientific
> computing softwares in the environment of Emacs so far. Therefore, I
> want to use GRASS on emacs. Does anyone know an interface between the
> user and GRASS on emacs? Is there the emacs-lisp program which
> provides the emacs major mode?
> For example, there is the ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics), which inter-
> faces with S-Plus, R, SAS and so on, for statistical computing.

I'm not aware of any Emacs facilities for GRASS specifically (I use
XEmacs for most of my work, so I would certainly have taken note if I
had heard of anything). There is an R interface to GRASS, which would
presumably work with ESS.

One hint: if you wish to use GRASS from within an Emacs shell-mode
buffer, you can bypass the curses-based startup screen by passing the
complete path to the mapset directory as an argument to the "grass5"
script. I.e.

	grass5 /opt/grass-data/spearfish/glynn

has the same effect as running "grass5" without arguments and entering
the following in the startup screen:

	LOCATION:   spearfish
	MAPSET:     glynn
	DATABASE:   /opt/grass-data

Unfortunately, a few programs (primarily v.digit and many of the
imagery programs) can only be used through a curses-based interface,
which won't work with shell-mode. term-mode should work, but that
"eats" most of Emacs' common keystrokes, which substantially reduces
its usefulness, IMHO.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>