[GRASSLIST:8301] New GIS Manager version

[Michael Barton]

I¹ve just committed a fairly major update to the GIS Manager to the cvs for
GRASS 6.1.  

It is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But it still has a number of
new features that I hope will continue to make the many functions of GRASS
more accessible. I¹ve also posted it to my website at

<http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton/files/grass_gismgr/>

The file is GIS_manager050912.tgz

It includes a replacement $GISBASE/etc/dm directory with all files and a new
script, d.out.file, for the $GISBASE/scripts directory.

One of the main features of the GIS Manager update is that all major display
functions are now GIS Manager layers with options panels. This makes them
much easier to manipulate AND to save in workspaces. All options panels now
have integrated help buttons. I also added a print to default printer via
lpr in the file menu. This lets you print what you see on the screen
(assuming your default printer is configured correctly). New updates to
ps.map recently committed to the cvs provide another way to get nice printed
output. Note that the printer icon remains a link to print ONLY some raster,
vector, and label files via ps.map.

The new format made the old ³display² menu redundant and it has been removed
(although all modules and their TclTk interactive dialogs are still
available from the command line).  This led to a little rearrangement of the
menu structure. Several items have moved to file: primarily gis file
management functions (this was a suggestion a long time back). The GIS menu
(which some people didn¹t like) has changed to a configuration menu. Slope
arrows in raster cells moved to raster/terrain and histograms moved to
image/reports and stats. The remaining entries from the old display menu
that are not in other locations or GIS Manager layers are primarily for
programming (d.linegraph).

The GIS Manager is somewhat more compact, with a new arrangement of
functions: monitor control down the left side, general display controls and
tools on the top toolbar and layers on bottom toolbar. I¹ve also added
color. Grey is OK for the eyes, but grey on grey is hard to see and pretty
dull. Grass is green, so the GIS Manager is green.

The new script (d.out.file) replaces and expands d.out.png. It makes it easy
to save the current display monitor to various graphic file formats (along
with PNG and PNM, it adds JPEG, TIF, and BMP with compression options for
PNG and JPEG). It uses the GRASS PNG driver and gdal because they come with
all GRASS installations. Other utilities (e.g., netpbm and imagemagick) have
more options but are not required for a GRASS installation.

Let me know what works and what doesn¹t. Several members of the developers
list have helped me test it pretty thoroughly, but I probably missed
something somewhere.

Enjoy!
Michael
______________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
USA

voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton

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