On 22 January 2015 at 03:25, Markus Neteler <nete...@osgeo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Moritz Lennert > <mlenn...@club.worldonline.be> wrote: > > On 21/01/15 19:35, Markus Neteler wrote: > >> In my opinion we should not have the location selection dialog at all. > >> Revolution! > >> > >> We should start GRASS right away in latlong like most GIS in the world. > >> > >> Then let the user open the dialog to change projection if desired from > >> inside. > >> > >> This would avoid a lot of questions right away. > > > > Please don't do this ! > > OK, now being back from phone to a real keyboard, I can write a few more > lines. > > I am thinking about this issue for seeral years meanwhile (hint: I > started in 1993 to use the software, getting stuck at the text start > screen not having a manual :-). > > So my full suggestions are > - beautify the actual screen (hence my recent suggestion which is > lively discussed here), > - optionally (!) allow to start GRASS without welcome/loc/mapset > screen but to open it in LatLong as described above. Again, as an > option. We could implement that in trunk and see how it goes. All the > tools to select locations, projections and such are there. > > I can concur on the feeling of being lost but most students. What about a grass70 -b flag for "beginner" or something like this. That means we can work through the discovery straight "out of the box". It would be even easier to have a MSWin Icon using that option installed on the desktop directly, if we are looking at lowering the entry/discovery level. It could have a "beginner' infographic to direct new users to this one first. > > I find the fact that GRASS does not provide a default > > projection system, but forces the user to think about projection from the > > start, one of its strengths, both for work and for teaching. > > On of it strenghts, yes. But I have been teaching GRASS a lot to GIS > professionals who got trained on different systems. And many asked > "why this screen? why cannot you just start like the other GIS"? And I > tend to agree (again: optionally). The point is that we, on the > contrary to many other GIS, still have all the control mechanisms in > place which avoid that the user mixes projections. So that's all fine. > > Also in Portland at the FOSS4G conf (where I showcased GRASS GIS 7) > people suggested to let 'em get into the system right away. They > explained to me that a newcomer wants to see the menu to understand > how powerful the system is. But they would get stuck at the welcome > screen... Yes, and they don't want to think before they open the > program but "just try", out of curiosity. > > Perhaps we should move this discussion to a different thread and leave > this to the splash/welcome screen modernization. > > Best > Markus > _______________________________________________ > grass-dev mailing list > grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev > -- ----
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