[Qgis-developer] New GRASS plugin: a test drive

[Blumentrath, Stefan]

>> Testing on windows
>>>> GRASS LOCATION is "duplicated" displayed as a regular file system 
>>>> folder and as GRASS LOCATION with the GRASS icon
>>> That is correct, the regular directory is left there so that is it 
>>> possible to go for example to dbf directory and load dbf files as 
>>> standard QGIS layers.
>>
>> IMHO: i find it's confusing, and GRASS 7 default database is SQLite, i 
>> think it could be smoother to expose only GRASS Locations and Mapset 
>> being evident that we're dealing with a GRASS Database, but i can live 
>> with that :-)
>
>You are not the first who is confused. Fix would be easy, so I remove regular dir if it is recognized as GRASS location?

Indeed having the whole folder browseable might be confusing and users are not supposed to move files around in there anyway.
Yet, having the SQLite DB (or dbfs) of a mapset (if existing) available in the browser would be nice. That way also related / non-spatial tables in there could be easily added to QGIS. Probably even better if a context menu entry would allow to add the DB to "DB manager", so one can actually run queries without using db.execute or v.db.update...  But that`s for the future...

Regarding the tools-widget UI, I noticed that the "Close Mapset" butten takes space from the module tabs. The old "Close mapset" button was much smaller. Would it be possible to move that to the bottom of the GRASS module UI, where the Debug buttons are located (if debugging is activated)?
BTW, the tabs for the open modules can get pretty wide due to the icons (see e.g. v.db.join). Maybe better to use module names in the tabs?

Finally, I was wondering if it could be an idea to place all mapset related buttons (open / close / new / change mapset) at the bottom of the Modules dialogue and to add a "manage mapset access" button, which runs the mapset picker for modifying the search path (g.mapsets -s) there as well? One (I if you like) can add g.mapsets with the s-flag as a module (I tested "g.mapsets -s" in the QGIS-GRASS-plugin and it starts the GRASS dialogue successfully), but it is probably better to have this option a bit more prominent (as it might come in handy with the new multiple map input option)?

Anyway, great work you did and do with the plugin upgrade!

Cheers
Stefan