Dear Glynn I have been very surprised by the discussion on the Grass user lists explaining the end of the d.mon and associated d.rast, d.vect commands in the new Grass 7 version. I'd naively assumed that they were a permanent feature of the Grass environment. From what I understand, their phasing out is primarily because to retain them would impose considerable technical challenges in a new Gui environment, would not match the philosophy behind Gui interfaces, and provide little real benefit.
My concern is simply that of an end-user, administering a small network of Ubuntu PCs running Grass, because I have found it a considerable struggle to persuade existing users to upgrade to each new version of Grass. The proposed changes will undoubtedly make Grass more appealing to new users, but long-term users will drag their feet. I notice that even Microsoft is learning the hard way the risks of changing the user interface too radically in an upgrade. As way of contrast, R has kept a high degree of consistency of the interface for each new version, such that existing users have no problems when upgrading, but its command-line only environment causes massive barriers for new users who are only familiar with Gui software. Is Grass able to make some sort of compromise between improving the interface to make it more appealing to new users, whilst bringing its existing users with it? Best wishes Roy -- Roy Sanderson Institute for Research on Environment & Sustainability Devonshire Building Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU r.a.sander...@newcastle.ac.uk 0191 246 4835 _______________________________________________ grass-user mailing list grass-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user