[GRASS-user] Some thoughts on wxGUI (GRASS Community Sprint)

[Carlos Grohmann]

Dears, with the GRASS Community Sprint just around the corner, I want
to share some impressions and bug reports about the wxGUI.

Some are general, some are specific. All bugs/issues were found using
the latest svn.


GENERAL:

I said this before, the tabs in the wx gis manager should look like
real tabs. Currently, the bottom tabs (blue) don't look like 'normal'
tabs, so this can be potentially confusing for new users. Give them
the appearance of the upper tabs.

Improving drag-and-drop would be really helpful.

Also, when it comes to output of modules, we should have only one way
of doing it. Now some modules provide output in the gis manager window
(using on of the botom tabs), while others give output in the dialog
window. I think there should be only one kind of output.In my view, a
separated output window (like the tk gism) where _all_ output messages
would go, and one should be able to close without loosing info
(keeping a 'memory' of the session) or leave it open. I found myself
frequently trying to close the gism after inspecting some output info,
just to be reminded of what I was about to do when asked if I want to
save a workspace file.


One of the things that annoy me is the 'close dialog on finish'
option. I guess this was introduced to make GRASS look more like other
GIS packages, but honestly, it sucks. At leas for me, it is very
common to repeat the command with different settings, and I usually
forget to unset that option, being used to old-style GRASS GUI, so I
kind hate it. We could have a global preferences setting where we
could choose to 'close dialogs on finish' as default action or not.
But this would have to work for _all_ modules.
You can imagine how disappointing it is to run r.stats just to see the
dialog closing after calculations...

I also noticed that several modules fail to include the resulting map
in the tree


SPECIFIC
v.plane - I think the azimuth option here should be compass-oriented

r.to.rast3 - the 3D map is added to the tree, but when you call it
properties, it opens d.vect

r.slope.aspect - does not work with '@mapset' after the map name

r.in.gdal - the default dialog (import raster) locks access to gism. I
think it shouldn't, like the regular module dialogs

v.in.ogr - the default dialog (import vector) also locks access to
gism. Besides, in my machine, when I try to browse for files, it shows
nothing, even in a directory full of shapefiles (or any other format)

r.in.gdal - when I import a tiff, it creates map.red, map.blue,
map.green, but it adds 'map' to the tree, instead of an RGB composite.
Since 'map' doesn't exists, error messages galore.



Well, these are just personal ideas, but I hope they could be of use.

cheers


Carlos







-- 
Prof. Carlos Henrique Grohmann - Geologist D.Sc.
Institute of Geosciences - Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil
http://www.igc.usp.br/pessoais/guano
http://lattes.cnpq.br/5846052449613692
Linux User #89721
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