Beginners perhaps need to think about projections at the outset more so than 
advanced users. But I don’t think a ‘beginner’ and ‘advanced’ user version of 
the interface is a good idea. If we work out a way to simplify and/or 
streamline starting GRASS, it should just be the way the program works for all.

Michael
____________________
C. Michael Barton
Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Professor of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Head, Graduate Faculty in Complex Adaptive Systems Science
Arizona State University

voice:  480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC)
fax: 480-965-7671 (SHESC),  480-727-0709 (CSDC)
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.edu















On Jan 21, 2015, at 11:06 PM, Yann Chemin 
<yche...@gmail.com<mailto:yche...@gmail.com>> wrote:



On 22 January 2015 at 11:30, Michael Barton 
<michael.bar...@asu.edu<mailto:michael.bar...@asu.edu>> wrote:

This is a good start. Here are some suggestions for simplifying the text even 
more.

=================================

[Select GRASS GIS database directory]

(make this a button rather than a text box with browse; no need to show this 
path)

"A GRASS GIS database directory contains one or more Locations”

(no need to say that you can have more than one GISDBASE)

=================================

"All GIS data in a Location directory are in the same coordinate reference 
system (projection). Locations contain Mapsets.”

OR

"All GIS data in a Location directory are in the same spatial projection. 
Locations contain one or more Mapsets.”

(Locations are not necessarily related to ‘projects’. Mine are very much 
projection based—e.g., I have a single latlon Location for ALL my latlon data 
regardless of which research project it is used for. Do we need to say 
“coordinate reference system (projection)”? Doesn’t just “projection” cover it 
well enough? These are directories, so it might help to say this.)

=================================

"A Mapset contains GIS data. Every Location automatically has one Mapset named 
PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location."

(A Mapset may or may not relate to one task; that depends on the user. Some of 
mine do and some don’t. The ‘common data’ in PERMANENT is not really important 
except in a multi-user setup, which is not what most people use today. Mapsets 
are directories too, but as someone mentioned, maybe we shouldn’t stress this 
in case someone tries to move stuff around in a mapset. On the other hand, and 
unlike Arc, entire Locations and entire Mapsets CAN be moved without any harm).

=================================


I would not mess with trying to start GRASS without the standard 
database/location/mapset that we have now in 7.0 until we have some time to 
think it through and talk about it some. One easy to do thing would be to add a 
button to this screen (instead of inside the location wizard only) to create a 
latlon region and open GRASS in its PERMANENT mapset. But I’m not even sure 
that this is a good way to go yet.

Thus the idea of a starting flag "grass -b" to get a lat/long region and open a 
PERMANENT mapset. The whole thing can be a /tmp/random_name.

Michael


On Jan 21, 2015, at 9:36 PM, 
grass-dev-requ...@lists.osgeo.org<mailto:grass-dev-requ...@lists.osgeo.org> 
wrote:

From: Vaclav Petras <wenzesl...@gmail.com<mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com>>
To: GRASS developers list 
<grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org<mailto:grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org>>
Date: January 21, 2015 at 9:35:40 PM MST
Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers




On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Vaclav Petras 
<wenzesl...@gmail.com<mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com>> wrote:

To satisfy everybody, I suggest to provide a buttons with something like "Take 
me to LL", "Take me to default location" and "Take me to XY". What do you think 
about that?

But the real improvement should be the messages which would guide you through 
the process.

So, here is screenshot and diff for new layout of the window together the 
description what the things are useful for. The descriptions can be easily 
changed, they are wrapped texts, so they will work well with translations. So, 
feel free to suggest different ones. We can also make them "gray" as suggested 
earlier.

I used GRASS Location and Location. I though that GRASS could help to emphasize 
that it is something GRASS-related and few people were using Location and 
Mapset with capital letter which could say that it is a something like files 
format or spatial database name. I aimed to address the things I considered 
confusing. I'm not sure about the GRASS GIS data directory as I mentioned 
earlier.

Now it is higher then the old one but with removal of the image it will be 
smaller. If a small-enough image is used, it could be the same. I would like to 
not include the image to have more space for the error messages (currently one 
line between GISDBASE and Location boxes), so messages can be longer and 
perhaps some what to do next tips can be shown as well. The position of this 
text can/should be changed, now middle of the window (usually these are at the 
bottom or at the top). However, without image it might be actually a little 
boring.

I reorganized the buttons to manage the (list of) Locations and (list of) 
Mapsets, so now it looks like any other lists, e.g. in Simple Layer Manager or 
in Cartographic Composer. In future we can add buttons, for example unpack a 
zipped location or download sample datasets in case of Locations and show 
existing maps button in case of Mapsets.

A "Skip" button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I think 
that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate.

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2015-January/073268.html
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2015-January/073266.html
<startup_with_explanations.diff><startup_with_explanations.png>

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