[GRASS-user] Some suggestions

[Tim Michelsen]

>>> The second has one extra window (layer manager), but leaves
>>> more room in the display window for map display. GRASS has long
>>> followed the second model. It is a bit more cluttered if you are
>>> looking at one map, but less so if you are looking at more than one.
>> back to the idea of start with one window but allow tear-away. I expect
>> folks with multi-head displays will want the map display in a window in
>> one monitor and the controls in the other (original GRASS design AFAIK),
>> without having to tear-away manually each time. no idea what support is
>> like for this in wxPython.
> 
> I'm checking to see if it's possible to start with 2 windows and dock the
> layer manager if desired.
> 
> The issue for going the other way is that the layer manager (AKA GIS
> Manager) controls all displays, which can be very handy. Having it start out
> inside one display is a problem for the other displays. Making each display
> control its own layers is quite doable but means programming this all in a
> very different way. But doing this makes putting them back together into a
> single layer control very hard or impossible (AFAICT). Having a tear off
> layer manager for each display would *really* make for a cluttered screen.
> There wouldn't be much reason for the tear off manager in this case.
I think that this is a crucial point.
There should definately a option to run all Grass sub-windows all in one 
master windows.
Maybe others like their screen cluttered but especially newbie for whom 
the new GUI is a *real* improvement will get confused.
Don't forget that besides Grass users may also use a folder browser, 
terminal and mail application at the same time. And now that Grass is 
being ported to Windows don't forget that Windows doesn't have virtual 
workspaces like Gnome, KDE, etc.!

You may compare it to the disussions going on about the interface of 
Gimp & Photoshop. Here are some impressions what users do to run Gimp in 
1 window:
HOWTO: Run GIMP in its own window. - 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=240543&highlight=gimp+howto

Many huge open source projects have usability commitees or guidelines 
beyond the general workflow for the specific application.
Are such issues considered by the development team?

Please consider Jarek's concern. We all want to get FOSS4G more 
mainstream. I think that Ubuntu is streamlined towards usability and 
really easy to use [please, I am not starting a distro flame here!] and 
is based on another popular distribution: Debian. So we need users from 
OpenSuse or Fedore to have a word on this (wxPython) . It would 
certainly not be desireable that there'll be one more package (wxPython) 
which a user who wants to use latest Grass developments has to install 
to benefit fully.

I want to pay my tribute to this new GUI. Really a step forward!

Kind regards,
Tim