[GRASS-user] Label difficulties

[Adam Dershowitz]

On Aug 27, 2007, at 9:39 PM, Hamish wrote:

>
>
> My guess is that the crummy looking fonts is the result of a  
> limitation
> in the PS driver, although Michael might be able to confirm that.  
> If it's
> worth anything, the PNG driver actually makes the fonts look nicer  
> than
> on the xmon displays. (GUI canvas has the nice version)

I found that I actually can use the PNG driver (I had been just  
saving from the display to a png). And it does look better, if I  
crank up the size  bunch.

>
>
>> So my main question is how can I get good quality multi-line labels
>> to a saved file?  Is there a way to cause the font resolution to be
>> higher in my raster layer?  Is there a way to get a vector layer to
>> break across multiple lines where I want?  Is there some other
>> solution that I am missing?
>
> You might try ps.map or d.* commands directly on the command line,  
> they
> might not be as user friendly as the GUI, but they are more mature and
> IM(biased)O ps.map creates the best looking output.
>

But, for either using the PNG driver,  ps.map, or d.* commands I  
can't seem to figure out how to combine two raster maps.  In other  
words, what I am currently doing with the GUI, is displaying two  
raster maps, one is 50% transparent, and then adding some vector  
information over the top of that.  With the GUI I just set the opaque  
to transparent slider for one of the maps.
Is there a way to do the equivalent from the command line?  Or just  
to overlay two maps, one at 50% opaque, to generate a new raster  
map?  It seems like it should be easy, but I am not having any luck  
figuring it out.  I did try g.pnmcomp, that the gui uses, but it  
seems that it does  not find the files properly and it "isn't meant  
for the end user" anyway.
Any ideas?

--Adam