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

[Michael Barton]

Thanks for the input Carlos. Can you please post these as individual items in the bug tracker (after checking to make sure that they are not already posted, of course)? By putting them in the tracker, they can be identified and prioritized to be fixed.

Michael 

On Mar 8, 2011, at 3:01 AM, <grass-user-request at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 15:23:27 -0300
> From: Carlos Grohmann <carlos.grohmann at gmail.com>
> Subject: [GRASS-user] Some thoughts on wxGUI (GRASS Community Sprint)
> To: GRASS user list <grass-user at lists.osgeo.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTi=YQiafuYvosbHsCLtYo13GShdjhTZyv9NNx+Dc at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
> 
> 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