Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Taking into account usage patter of a person who knows (a bit) GRASS, I would say that this could be a good solution - access to functionality should be provided based on usage frequency. To make this solution perfect, it would be necessary to add some black magic that launches some configuration wizard with hand-holding help for first time users (determined i.e. by missing grassrc file). Add a button start-up wizard to allow start it also later and - poof! - simple dialog, friendly for experienced users but with hand-holding just a click away. And now, please, can we refocus away from this bike-shed problem? IMHO much bigger problem are not users scared of first screen at the first time but users not returning for second time because of missing/broken insert here your favourite bug. Just trolling, Maris. 2015-02-04 0:33 GMT+02:00 Blumentrath, Stefan stefan.blumentr...@nina.no: Even if there are probably already more proposals out there than I can count, here is yet another idea, which is a kind of intermediate solution between the minimalistic and classic approach: What about simplifying/reducing the Welcome-screen significantly as follows: 1) keep the two lists for selecting Locations and Mapsets (probably with a pre-selected combination), but not the buttons to their right. Compo-boxes would require extra clicks and being able to see available choices at once should not be a problem for newbies (as they have most likely only the demo-location). For those who have more locations and mapsets, the current solution with lists is likely to be significantly more convenient. 2) Remove the Select GRASS GIS database directory section. 3) have only three buttons: Start, Cancel, and Manage GRASS GIS database. The latter button can then provide all other functionality (selection of database directory, create or delete Locations and mapsets). In practice it would probably be a go back to classic welcome screen button... That way the solution gets quite close to Markus M`s proposal (with only 5 elements in probably 3 groups (plus banner) left on the welcome screen), while keeping the probably most frequently used functionality at the surface. Finally, things (GUI elements) could be arranged on the screen in a left-to-right work-(mouse-)flow: Location - Mapset - Button The rational behind this proposal is, that switching between locations and mapsets is something probably more common (and choosing a location and mapset has to do be done always even if one accepts a default). So that functionality should be directly and easily accessible at startup. Creating new locations and mapsets and especially changing the GRASS database directory is something people probably do less often. So here one additional click with a Manage GRASS DB button is maybe not that painful for second-time-users?! But I am afraid this is also just another way of having two parallel/alternative startups... Cheers Stefan ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:56 AM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: For newcomers/no rc file: how about creating a new GRASS GIS database in $HOME, +1 in there a new location with EPSG:4326 (latlong wgs84), the empty PERMANENT mapset will be created automatically. Does not apply to MS Windows, because the demolocation is created during installation. In theory the demolocation could be everywhere since it is part of the source code and even contains a world map. In theory, copying the demolocation should be easy. I'm just afraid that it will be hard to implement it, to get all the conditions and rights right and to debug it. $HOME is a safe place. However, since on MS Windows, the mechanism will not be used much, I give a GRASS course right now, most attendants are on MS Windows, and they happily use this mechanism. it is possible that some bugs will not need solving. See below, for one issue which is currently present and is even more important for this proposed functionality then for the current one. Why not having a minimal welcome screen with a dropdown list for existing locations and a dropdown list for existing mapsets in the selected location, plus a prominent OK button and a change/manage button, nothing else? +1 At FOSDEM, we discussed this issue and most discussion participants thought exactly in this direction. I wish I could be there. I still think that improving what we have now is a better way that, at expense of advanced users, try to hide the complexity which cannot be avoided at the end. The idea is to simplify the welcome screen and move out less commonly used functionality. Obviously we do not agree on what is less commonly used. It seems to me that everybody is so annoyed by the 64 startup behavior that changing everything seems as an only option. However, I think that just small improvements here and there are better in this case. Complete revamp of startup with focus on first time users may easily create unsatisfied second time users. Going through this thread, there are quite some second time users that agree on such a minimal welcome screen. Long time users often start GRASS on the command line with the desired location and mapset given on the command line, no welcome screen at all, nice! I do not think that this will create unsatisfied second time users. We can go on forever with this I prefer this and But I prefer that. Instead I would propose a poll with GRASS users and let them decide. Markus M I don't want to name all changes I've done but let's take example of the recent ones. The message which was originally in an error dialog is now just a red text in the main window (r64407). In r64408 I removed the text in command line which required user to Hit RETURN which may be easy to do once you understand what that you should press Enter but interacting with command line is probably what you don't want the first time user to do. See old and new state of GRASS right after running `grass` command (left old, right new state). There is one bug in the startup I was not really looking at, yet. In grass.py there is some dummy rc file created and GISDBASE is set to current working directory ($HOME in 64 seems a bit more reasonable). This file is loaded in gis_set.py where value for Location (UNKNOWN) is used to show the first-time-user create location warning/message. However, GISDBASE is used used anyway to fill the corresponding input field which is quite confusing. Should GUI respect whatever is in rc file or should it consider rc file with UNKNOWN for Location as invalid? In other words, how to recognize the state of first time user when a message about creating grassdata should be shown (or in the future, grassdata and demolocation created automatically)? Vaclav http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64407 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64408 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/trunk/lib/init/grass.py?rev=64408#L502 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/trunk/lib/init/grass.py?rev=37863#L331 http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/browser/grass/branches/releasebranch_6_4/lib/init/init.sh?rev=55970#L435 ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 03/02/15 09:04, Markus Metz wrote: We can go on forever with this I prefer this and But I prefer that. Instead I would propose a poll with GRASS users and let them decide. I actually don't think we need to decide. Why not just propose different startup options and users can chose amongst them ? Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Moritz Lennert mlenn...@club.worldonline.be wrote: On 03/02/15 09:04, Markus Metz wrote: We can go on forever with this I prefer this and But I prefer that. Instead I would propose a poll with GRASS users and let them decide. I actually don't think we need to decide. Why not just propose different startup options and users can chose amongst them ? But what should a user see upon first start? There could be two welcome screens, a minimal one with an advanced button, and the current one with a simple button. On next start, the previously used welcome screen would be used (new GISRC variable). That should make everybody happy. A prototype for a minimal welcome screen actually exists in Settings - GRASS working environment - Change location and mapset. Markus M ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
** 1) Run GRASS launch script = GUI opens directly 2) Have entries in the 'File'-Menu to - 'Open existing location' - 'Create new location' - 'Creat new mapset' - 'Manage locations and mapsets' (could also replace the two last entries) 3) When the user tries to add a layer to the display or to run any module, a warning pops up saying something like this: You have to create a new location or open an existing before being able to display any data with buttons: - Open existing location - Create new location - Cancel The 'Create new location' would bring you to the equivalent of the current location creation wizard. what about a minimalistic welcome screen with 2 buttons for the two main tasks at the beginning of a GRASS session? (1) Open existing GRASS GIS data = opens our actual (and maybe adapted) welcome screen to choose existing locations mapset (2) Create new GRASS GIS data (location, mapset and import your data) = opens our nice locations wizzard with re-ordered options while create location by data and import it is the first option the third button links to a small help page about the location/mapset structure. - best regards Helmut -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Making-start-of-GRASS-GIS-easier-for-newcomers-tp5182982p5185214.html Sent from the Grass - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, I have taken liberty to upload #4 in r64447 in order to get something changed for RC2 which is overdue (the image part of the screen should probably be filled with a white background). Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Even if there are probably already more proposals out there than I can count, here is yet another idea, which is a kind of intermediate solution between the minimalistic and classic approach: What about simplifying/reducing the Welcome-screen significantly as follows: 1) keep the two lists for selecting Locations and Mapsets (probably with a pre-selected combination), but not the buttons to their right. Compo-boxes would require extra clicks and being able to see available choices at once should not be a problem for newbies (as they have most likely only the demo-location). For those who have more locations and mapsets, the current solution with lists is likely to be significantly more convenient. 2) Remove the Select GRASS GIS database directory section. 3) have only three buttons: Start, Cancel, and Manage GRASS GIS database. The latter button can then provide all other functionality (selection of database directory, create or delete Locations and mapsets). In practice it would probably be a go back to classic welcome screen button... That way the solution gets quite close to Markus M`s proposal (with only 5 elements in probably 3 groups (plus banner) left on the welcome screen), while keeping the probably most frequently used functionality at the surface. Finally, things (GUI elements) could be arranged on the screen in a left-to-right work-(mouse-)flow: Location - Mapset - Button The rational behind this proposal is, that switching between locations and mapsets is something probably more common (and choosing a location and mapset has to do be done always even if one accepts a default). So that functionality should be directly and easily accessible at startup. Creating new locations and mapsets and especially changing the GRASS database directory is something people probably do less often. So here one additional click with a Manage GRASS DB button is maybe not that painful for second-time-users?! But I am afraid this is also just another way of having two parallel/alternative startups... Cheers Stefan -Original Message- From: grass-dev-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:grass-dev-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Markus Neteler Sent: 3. februar 2015 21:16 To: Markus Metz Cc: Helena Mitasova; Martin Landa; C Michael Barton; GRASS developers list Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: ... A prototype for a minimal welcome screen actually exists in Settings - GRASS working environment - Change location and mapset. Could anyone make this accessible at startup time with a flag? Then we could try out how it satisfies the group of minimalistic startup screen users in this discussion. thanks Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi Vaclav, 2015-02-02 20:01 GMT+01:00 Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com: More improvements for startup window in r64405. I tested improvements on Windows, it looks better, thanks. There are still margins too wide [1], but it's just minor comment. Martin [1] http://geo1.fsv.cvut.cz/landa/grass71-1.png -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: ... A prototype for a minimal welcome screen actually exists in Settings - GRASS working environment - Change location and mapset. Could anyone make this accessible at startup time with a flag? Then we could try out how it satisfies the group of minimalistic startup screen users in this discussion. thanks Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 03.02.2015 09:53, Blumentrath, Stefan wrote: [..] 1) I was just wondering, every module has a manual, the startup-screen does not. What about having a e.g. the “Location and Mapsets” wiki page as a manual behind e.g. a (not too flashy) question-mark-button on the on the welome screen. +1 Minimal body with text. Three visuals, in which the concepts of Location and Mapset(s) are self-explained. Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 3:15 PM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Vaclav, 2015-02-02 20:01 GMT+01:00 Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com: More improvements for startup window in r64405. I tested improvements on Windows, it looks better, thanks. There are still margins too wide [1], but it's just minor comment. I was looking into that, but I don't understand why it behaves like this... Anna Martin [1] http://geo1.fsv.cvut.cz/landa/grass71-1.png -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Unfortunately the screenshots are too low resolution for me to read them here. So I might miss something that is on the screenshot. It's just about layout, don't worry about text. I can of course send full size if somebody wants. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: To make this more compact, there is still extraneous information not needed below the location and mapset windows. I don't think we have a consensus of what is the information needed. Shortest is no info but that's not ideal neither. Perhaps we should use word database rather then directory as a primary term, so users actually realize that it is something special. gisdbase = database location = 'subdatabase' (it also seems like a database) mapset = namespace Also, error messages should be in popup error windows, not displayed on the main dialog. We are trying to do the start of GRASS more friendly. As I already described, in 6.4 (and old 7) if you start GRASS and 1) the gisdbase is empty or 2) the gisdbase does not exist (after moving the grassdata dir or *during* manual editing of the field) or 3) you are starting GRASS for the first time (i.e. you had no rc file, try with mv ~/.grass7/rc ~/.grass7/rc.backup) you get an error dialog. These are the states which beginner is likely to get. Popping up error dialogs are really unfriendly and warm welcome in command line with recommendation to get a current catalog of available computer maps will not really fix it. Moreover, the error dialogs are annoying for an advanced user too when all one needs to do it just to change one value. These error messages as a part of the window is a modern/current technique how to deal with different errors and warnings which would soon overwhelm user. Another advantage is that user can read the error message again and again until the problem is solved. The need to press OK in error dialog is just extra step which you have to do and the result is that everybody is just pressing OK without reading the message and then the user doesn't know what was the problem. 1) and 2) were already fixed in r57549. 3) fixed in r64405 was a bit special because after pressing OK, you got browse dialog for gisdbase without knowing what it is and what is the relation with the other things (loc, mapset, data). If there is no error message, the vertical space is used by Location and Mapset lists. (Before one line was still there but the error message had to be one line too). We need long enough descriptions and we need the error messages. If there is something extra, it is the banner and a little bit of Location and Mapset lists which are now higher than before (even with an error message). Look at the attached image and tell me if I should make the Location and Mapset smaller (I hope it will be possible do implement). http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/57549/grass/trunk/gui/wxpython/gis_set.py http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64405/grass/trunk/gui/wxpython/gis_set.py ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:01 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: More improvements for startup window in r64405. Most notably you don't get error message when starting GRASS for the first time without a rc file. After clicking OK, you would get a browse window. Now you just get a warning text in the middle of the window and it is up to you to read it and press the button. In my opinion, much less annoying behavior. The descriptions are now in gray. This is system color, so it should work with different themes. (This is not true for the things like warning text or grayed out Mapsets) I changed the descriptions a little bit but it needs more care. Anybody can change it now but perhaps we should try to discuss them without diverging to how to do startup procedure differently. Also there is more strings, some messages, they might need some revision too. E.g. should there be numbers in the box titles? And what about the error messages? The windows issues are just partially fixed. It seems that wxPython is not determining the wrapping properly. The widgets have the same boundaries in widget inspector on MS Windows and on Linux. Just the text is wrapped differently. The vertical size is bigger then it was before (you can compare at an image posted earlier [2]). It will get smaller by using smaller banner image. However, longer descriptions and the error/warning text are making it bigger. Now the behavior of error/warning text is that it does not occupy any space unless something is shown. Hopefully it will work on all platforms (seems to work well on Linux and MS Windows). In theory, the window could be re-sized by user to be smaller (if screen is small) but I'm not able to make Location and Mapset lists to allow it. If I set minimal size, then they actually use it from the beginning and I get unnecessary small lists. We could get some vertical space by growing wider but then the Location and Mapset lists are unnecessary wide. For newcomers/no rc file: how about creating a new GRASS GIS database in $HOME, in there a new location with EPSG:4326 (latlong wgs84), the empty PERMANENT mapset will be created automatically. Does not apply to MS Windows, because the demolocation is created during installation. I agree, we were suggesting this too. Why not having a minimal welcome screen with a dropdown list for existing locations and a dropdown list for existing mapsets in the selected location, plus a prominent OK button and a change/manage button, nothing else? It's the difference between You need to fill in this form first, and fix the errors in the form, after that you may enter GRASS GIS User wouldn't need to fill the form in case there is the wgs84 location before starting grass. In case of errors, how would minimal welcome screen help? and Welcome! Just press OK to enter GRASS GIS It seems to me that the current list is easier to navigate than if the locations and mapset would be in combo box. I often click on different locations in the list to see the mapsets, that would be more difficult with the combo boxes. Your suggestion is probably useful for new users, but is convenient for normal users? Should we implement both and let people switch it? I would try to avoid two solutions. Should we somehow vote about this? We probably need to put all these (detailed) suggestions on trac. Anna Markus M Vaclav [1] http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64405 [2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/attachments/20150121/62aad5af/attachment-0001.png http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/attachment/5183019/1/startup_with_explanations.png ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
(now back from https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/geospatial/ - digging through the emails) On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 9:01 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:01 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: More improvements for startup window in r64405. Please let's not welcome a (new) user with a warning... looks scary. For newcomers/no rc file: how about creating a new GRASS GIS database in $HOME, +1 in there a new location with EPSG:4326 (latlong wgs84), the empty PERMANENT mapset will be created automatically. Does not apply to MS Windows, because the demolocation is created during installation. In theory the demolocation could be everywhere since it is part of the source code and even contains a world map. Why not having a minimal welcome screen with a dropdown list for existing locations and a dropdown list for existing mapsets in the selected location, plus a prominent OK button and a change/manage button, nothing else? +1 At FOSDEM, we discussed this issue and most discussion participants thought exactly in this direction. It's the difference between You need to fill in this form first, and fix the errors in the form, after that you may enter GRASS GIS and Welcome! Just press OK to enter GRASS GIS Yes, the latters reads way more inviting markusN ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
__ On Feb 2, 2015, at 2:31 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edumailto:michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: To make this more compact, there is still extraneous information not needed below the location and mapset windows. I don't think we have a consensus of what is the information needed. Shortest is no info but that's not ideal neither. Perhaps we should use word database rather then directory as a primary term, so users actually realize that it is something special. gisdbase = database location = 'subdatabase' (it also seems like a database) mapset = namespace I think that the right information is currently in the directions. But if we want to make it shorter, there are some things that could be removed with no loss. A Location could be used for a project but also might not. So that sentence could be left out, for example. Also, error messages should be in popup error windows, not displayed on the main dialog. We are trying to do the start of GRASS more friendly. As I already described, in 6.4 (and old 7) if you start GRASS and 1) the gisdbase is empty or 2) the gisdbase does not exist (after moving the grassdata dir or *during* manual editing of the field) or 3) you are starting GRASS for the first time (i.e. you had no rc file, try with mv ~/.grass7/rc ~/.grass7/rc.backup) you get an error dialog. These are the states which beginner is likely to get. Popping up error dialogs are really unfriendly and warm welcome in command line with recommendation to get a current catalog of available computer maps will not really fix it. Moreover, the error dialogs are annoying for an advanced user too when all one needs to do it just to change one value. These error messages as a part of the window is a modern/current technique how to deal with different errors and warnings which would soon overwhelm user. Another advantage is that user can read the error message again and again until the problem is solved. The need to press OK in error dialog is just extra step which you have to do and the result is that everybody is just pressing OK without reading the message and then the user doesn't know what was the problem. 1) and 2) were already fixed in r57549. 3) fixed in r64405 was a bit special because after pressing OK, you got browse dialog for gisdbase without knowing what it is and what is the relation with the other things (loc, mapset, data). If there is no error message, the vertical space is used by Location and Mapset lists. (Before one line was still there but the error message had to be one line too). The example message is great. You can specify what message is displayed in a popup, just like specifying it on the main screen. The only difference is that it does not take up space on the main dialog—especially if there are no errors. I don’t see a popup error message as being any less friendly than red text on the main dialog. But maybe others do. Also, I’ve never had a problem with the size of the startup dialog. But you and others have mentioned it. So I’m trying to thing of ways to streamline it. We need long enough descriptions and we need the error messages. If there is something extra, it is the banner and a little bit of Location and Mapset lists which are now higher than before (even with an error message). Look at the attached image and tell me if I should make the Location and Mapset smaller (I hope it will be possible do implement). Unfortunately the screenshots are too low resolution for me to read them here. So I might miss something that is on the screenshot. Michael http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/57549/grass/trunk/gui/wxpython/gis_set.py http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64405/grass/trunk/gui/wxpython/gis_set.py startup_warning_64_7error_7ok.png ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 9:01 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:01 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: More improvements for startup window in r64405. Please let's not welcome a (new) user with a warning... looks scary. I though that warning is better then error dialog which was there from very beginning of wxGUI. See comparison in the attachment. Note also that after pressing OK you got the browse dialog. I'm afraid I'm not able to deliver something better before the release, at least not RC2. If a grassdata dir and some location would be automatically created (copied demo location), it should not show anything. Currently it is just using whatever was there which apparently suffers from some mess in (between) grass.py and gis_set.py which is creating some rc file but not good enough and it is not checking if something is actually in the guessed gisdbase. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 11:02 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Unfortunately the screenshots are too low resolution for me to read them here. So I might miss something that is on the screenshot. It's just about layout, don't worry about text. I can of course send full size if somebody wants. Please post at least double size... thanks Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
I think that they are equally as informative and the one on the left takes up less space. Just my opinion. 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 Tempe, AZ 85287-2402 USA voice: 480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC) fax: 480-965-7671(SHESC), 480-727-0709 (CSDC) www: http://csdc.asu.edu, http://shesc.asu.edu http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton On Feb 2, 2015, at 4:11 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.orgmailto:nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 11:02 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edumailto:michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Unfortunately the screenshots are too low resolution for me to read them here. So I might miss something that is on the screenshot. It's just about layout, don't worry about text. I can of course send full size if somebody wants. Please post at least double size... I posted 25%, now posting 50% which is not significantly smaller then 100% even after optipng, so I can post just one image at a time. Here is what you see when you start 64 for the first time and when you start current trunk for the first time. thanks Markus startup_old_and_new_error_warning_50.png ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 9:01 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:01 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: More improvements for startup window in r64405. Please let's not welcome a (new) user with a warning... looks scary. I though that warning is better then error dialog which was there from very beginning of wxGUI. See comparison in the attachment. Note also that after pressing OK you got the browse dialog. I'm afraid I'm not able to deliver something better before the release, at least not RC2. Would replacing the word Warning with Hint, or nothing solve the issue for you? Or changing the color? (Supposing that we don't have a mechanism to create a dir automatically and we want to provide info to the user.) ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
It may sound out of place, but would it be possible to call this dialog anytime during a grass session to manage where you want to work through a known, unified interface? On Feb 3, 2015 4:42 AM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 6:34 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: I think that they are equally as informative and the one on the left takes up less space. Just my opinion. Replacing Warning: by nothing in r64407. Other changes included as well, most notably decreased vertical size at expense of Location and Mapset lists which are now as big as in 64. The whole dialog is just little bit bigger than in 64, so with smaller banner it will be hopefully smaller. I would prefer if it would be possible to make it smaller by dragging but it is not (I tried several times but I cannot get it work). I also changed the user visible strings, see commit for details but most importantly I add numbers to the boxes to make it clear in which order you should fill them (and that there is an order). Please, see screenshot (40%), commit message and diff for details. Vaclav http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64407 Michael On Feb 2, 2015, at 4:11 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 11:02 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Unfortunately the screenshots are too low resolution for me to read them here. So I might miss something that is on the screenshot. It's just about layout, don't worry about text. I can of course send full size if somebody wants. Please post at least double size... I posted 25%, now posting 50% which is not significantly smaller then 100% even after optipng, so I can post just one image at a time. Here is what you see when you start 64 for the first time and when you start current trunk for the first time. thanks Markus startup_old_and_new_error_warning_50.png ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Dear all, Following this relatively long thread one can observe that some arguments and proposals are being repeated, while other aspects receive probably less attention than they deserve. Therefor Anna`s suggestion below seems quite reasonable, in order to e.g. identify differences between solutions proposed, pros and cons and for preparing a decision on this. We probably need to put all these (detailed) suggestions on trac. Anna Finally, I could think of two other “improvements” (I do not want to make things more complicated): 1) I was just wondering, every module has a manual, the startup-screen does not. What about having a e.g. the “Location and Mapsets” wiki page as a manual behind e.g. a (not too flashy) question-mark-button on the on the welome screen. 2) When providing a demo location, personally, I would be afraid that people blindly start using it for their work. Would it be possible to launch an info message every time a user starts a mapset in “demolocation”, which tells that it is meant for demo purposes only and that he/she should build up a GRASS GIS database according to the relevant maping context (providing access/link to in depth “Location and Mapset” information)? Cheers Stefan ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
More improvements for startup window in r64405. Most notably you don't get error message when starting GRASS for the first time without a rc file. After clicking OK, you would get a browse window. Now you just get a warning text in the middle of the window and it is up to you to read it and press the button. In my opinion, much less annoying behavior. The descriptions are now in gray. This is system color, so it should work with different themes. (This is not true for the things like warning text or grayed out Mapsets) I changed the descriptions a little bit but it needs more care. Anybody can change it now but perhaps we should try to discuss them without diverging to how to do startup procedure differently. Also there is more strings, some messages, they might need some revision too. E.g. should there be numbers in the box titles? And what about the error messages? The windows issues are just partially fixed. It seems that wxPython is not determining the wrapping properly. The widgets have the same boundaries in widget inspector on MS Windows and on Linux. Just the text is wrapped differently. The vertical size is bigger then it was before (you can compare at an image posted earlier [2]). It will get smaller by using smaller banner image. However, longer descriptions and the error/warning text are making it bigger. Now the behavior of error/warning text is that it does not occupy any space unless something is shown. Hopefully it will work on all platforms (seems to work well on Linux and MS Windows). In theory, the window could be re-sized by user to be smaller (if screen is small) but I'm not able to make Location and Mapset lists to allow it. If I set minimal size, then they actually use it from the beginning and I get unnecessary small lists. We could get some vertical space by growing wider but then the Location and Mapset lists are unnecessary wide. Vaclav [1] http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64405 [2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/attachments/20150121/62aad5af/attachment-0001.png http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/attachment/5183019/1/startup_with_explanations.png ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
To make this more compact, there is still extraneous information not needed below the location and mapset windows. Also, error messages should be in popup error windows, not displayed on the main dialog. 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 Tempe, AZ 85287-2402 USA voice: 480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC) fax: 480-965-7671(SHESC), 480-727-0709 (CSDC) www: http://csdc.asu.edu, http://shesc.asu.edu http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton On Feb 2, 2015, at 12:01 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: More improvements for startup window in r64405. Most notably you don't get error message when starting GRASS for the first time without a rc file. After clicking OK, you would get a browse window. Now you just get a warning text in the middle of the window and it is up to you to read it and press the button. In my opinion, much less annoying behavior. The descriptions are now in gray. This is system color, so it should work with different themes. (This is not true for the things like warning text or grayed out Mapsets) I changed the descriptions a little bit but it needs more care. Anybody can change it now but perhaps we should try to discuss them without diverging to how to do startup procedure differently. Also there is more strings, some messages, they might need some revision too. E.g. should there be numbers in the box titles? And what about the error messages? The windows issues are just partially fixed. It seems that wxPython is not determining the wrapping properly. The widgets have the same boundaries in widget inspector on MS Windows and on Linux. Just the text is wrapped differently. The vertical size is bigger then it was before (you can compare at an image posted earlier [2]). It will get smaller by using smaller banner image. However, longer descriptions and the error/warning text are making it bigger. Now the behavior of error/warning text is that it does not occupy any space unless something is shown. Hopefully it will work on all platforms (seems to work well on Linux and MS Windows). In theory, the window could be re-sized by user to be smaller (if screen is small) but I'm not able to make Location and Mapset lists to allow it. If I set minimal size, then they actually use it from the beginning and I get unnecessary small lists. We could get some vertical space by growing wider but then the Location and Mapset lists are unnecessary wide. Vaclav [1] http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64405 [2] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/attachments/20150121/62aad5af/attachment-0001.png http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/attachment/5183019/1/startup_with_explanations.png startup_warning.png ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, 2015-01-28 19:59 GMT+01:00 Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com: Done in r64345. btw, on Windows the welcome screen is now somehow bigger, location desc is missing and mapset desc is wrapped too much, see [1]. Martin [1] http://geo1.fsv.cvut.cz/landa/grass71.png -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.com wrote: Continuing the crazy thoughts, You could have FFT/wavelet parameters per column of a raster image hard-coded to create an image on request (that I could do I think). ... r.surf.fractal does this... but: About a vector, well a set of polygon arcs pairs can easily be stored in code and (i suppose) imported on the fly as a vector. ... but in times of open data it sounds strange to me to randomly generate data. You can then not even reproduce the same results. I would definitely stick to real data as already included in the demolocation. just my 0.02 cents, Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
This is sort of beginning to sound like what we already have. That is, we have a button on the web site that downloads a demo data set that is already organized in a location and mapset. 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 30, 2015, at 3:19 AM, Rainer M Krug rai...@krugs.de wrote: Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.com writes: +1 for a button, but I am not sure sure a data download is that necessary... I think a download button would be useful as the demo location should be in the home directory so that the user can play with it. The disadvantage would be that the user has to be online for this. A compromise could be to have a) an archived location in package form, so that the archive is installed but not the location. This would be an optional package. b) A button which, depending on whether the grass-demodata package has been installed, extracts the archived location into the home directory or, if it has not been installed, suggests to download it. Cheers, Rainer The button might just be a script creating a (several?) empty Location(s?) in a directory that the user can choose. On 30 January 2015 at 15:20, Moritz Lennert mlenn...@club.worldonline.be wrote: On 29/01/15 17:43, Vaclav Petras wrote: On the MS Windows installer takes care of that by copying demo Location to newly created grassdata dir in Documents and creating the rc file. Is this enough? If not why? And do we want to do something similar for cases when installation is not done by GRASS GIS? If startup detects no grassdata it could just create the dir and copy the demo Location there, so the only thing needed is to press Start button. Don't forget that in many GNU/Linux distributions data is separated from applications in the packaging. So, either we have to tell users to install a specific data package (e.g. grass-demodata) or the startup screen needs a button: Download and unpack demo data. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Dear all, I would like to support Michael`s and Nikos`s suggestions for changes in the descriptions on the welcome screen in trunk, as I think careful and well-thought-out wording will be an important means of Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers. On courses here at the University of Oslo, I saw people creating a new gisdbase folder - in anticipatory obedience - at the beginning of the second day of the course, because it was the first thing we did on the first day. Shortly after they wondered how they can access the data from the first day... Saying something like There can be more than one or more directories like that on one machine is technically true but does probably not reflect the concept of the GRASS GIS database... Furthermore, if that folder is predefined, people may be less tempted to create several gisdatabase folder on their computer. One might even go one step further saying: The GRASS GIS database directory is the central place where all your GRASS GIS data will be stored/organized. Change the folder only for a good reason. Also greying out the path (and not having it as an input field), as proposed by others earlier, could be a good idea. As for the Location description, what about: A Location in GRASS is defined by a Coordinate Reference System. It is a subdirectory of the gisdatabase containing one or more collections of spatial data (Mapsets), which all share the Location`s CRS. I also like this statement from the wiki: You can think of a location as a data library for a region of interest. For mapsets I do like Nikos proposal. And alike Michael I tend to compare mapsets with projects (and not Locations). In fact creating a location for every project would be counterproductive cause it would lead to fragmentation and data duplication... Markus, from your experience from your courses, are there explanations which usually work particularly well for newbies and people coming from other GIS? Kind regards, Stefan -Original Message- From: grass-dev-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:grass-dev-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Nikos Alexandris Sent: 29. januar 2015 18:13 To: Moritz Lennert Cc: Michael Barton; GRASS developers grass-developers Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers On 29.01.2015 18:49, Moritz Lennert wrote: ### Mapset A Mapset contains GIS data. Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location. Maybe add a little about use of mapsets: A Mapset is a subdirectory of a location and contains GIS data. Mapsets are used to organise the data into coherent subsets (by project, user, or other systems). Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location. Proposing slightly different wording: A Mapset is a subdirectory inside a Location and contains geospatial data. Mapsets are useful in organising the data into coherent subsets (by project, user, or other thematic units). If we don't have enough space, I'd just drop the last sentence about the PERMANENT mapset. [Looking at this I actually makes me think about the real need for 'PERMANENT'. Couldn't the location-relevant files just be stored in (possible hidden files directly in the location directory ? Or do we want to keep the notion of permanent data vs modifiable data for educational purpose ? Then again, I don't really want to open Pandora's box at this stage of the release process... ;-) ] Using the PERMANENT Mapset as a safety-pool, for all of the raw data, isn't a bad idea as well. Copy then elsewhere and play along. I do it most of the times. It saves time to re-import stuff, for example, if a map is irreversibly modified. Which is a matter of time to happen (and not a question of will it happen?). At the end of a project's life-cycle, stuff can be cleaned. Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
+1 for a button, but I am not sure sure a data download is that necessary... The button might just be a script creating a (several?) empty Location(s?) in a directory that the user can choose. On 30 January 2015 at 15:20, Moritz Lennert mlenn...@club.worldonline.be wrote: On 29/01/15 17:43, Vaclav Petras wrote: On the MS Windows installer takes care of that by copying demo Location to newly created grassdata dir in Documents and creating the rc file. Is this enough? If not why? And do we want to do something similar for cases when installation is not done by GRASS GIS? If startup detects no grassdata it could just create the dir and copy the demo Location there, so the only thing needed is to press Start button. Don't forget that in many GNU/Linux distributions data is separated from applications in the packaging. So, either we have to tell users to install a specific data package (e.g. grass-demodata) or the startup screen needs a button: Download and unpack demo data. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.com writes: +1 for a button, but I am not sure sure a data download is that necessary... I think a download button would be useful as the demo location should be in the home directory so that the user can play with it. The disadvantage would be that the user has to be online for this. A compromise could be to have a) an archived location in package form, so that the archive is installed but not the location. This would be an optional package. b) A button which, depending on whether the grass-demodata package has been installed, extracts the archived location into the home directory or, if it has not been installed, suggests to download it. Cheers, Rainer The button might just be a script creating a (several?) empty Location(s?) in a directory that the user can choose. On 30 January 2015 at 15:20, Moritz Lennert mlenn...@club.worldonline.be wrote: On 29/01/15 17:43, Vaclav Petras wrote: On the MS Windows installer takes care of that by copying demo Location to newly created grassdata dir in Documents and creating the rc file. Is this enough? If not why? And do we want to do something similar for cases when installation is not done by GRASS GIS? If startup detects no grassdata it could just create the dir and copy the demo Location there, so the only thing needed is to press Start button. Don't forget that in many GNU/Linux distributions data is separated from applications in the packaging. So, either we have to tell users to install a specific data package (e.g. grass-demodata) or the startup screen needs a button: Download and unpack demo data. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Maybe a crazy idea, but... if access to internet isn't an option, maybe the button can create a Location and Mapset(s), and let a script create some artificial vector and raster maps? So a user can still play along with unreal data. Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 29/01/15 17:43, Vaclav Petras wrote: On the MS Windows installer takes care of that by copying demo Location to newly created grassdata dir in Documents and creating the rc file. Is this enough? If not why? And do we want to do something similar for cases when installation is not done by GRASS GIS? If startup detects no grassdata it could just create the dir and copy the demo Location there, so the only thing needed is to press Start button. Don't forget that in many GNU/Linux distributions data is separated from applications in the packaging. So, either we have to tell users to install a specific data package (e.g. grass-demodata) or the startup screen needs a button: Download and unpack demo data. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 30/01/15 11:01, Yann Chemin wrote: +1 for a button, but I am not sure sure a data download is that necessary... The button might just be a script creating a (several?) empty Location(s?) in a directory that the user can choose. I think the idea was to have a location with some data already in it to allow people to just explore GRASS without having to think about data import issues, etc. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 30.01.2015 14:35, Yann Chemin wrote: Continuing the crazy thoughts, You could have FFT/wavelet parameters per column of a raster image hard-coded to create an image on request (that I could do I think). About a vector, well a set of polygon arcs pairs can easily be stored in code and (i suppose) imported on the fly as a vector. I was thinking more of random stuff (random points, polygons for vectors, and some arbitrary raster maps based on some random/fuzzy rules). But your idea is far more advanced and suitable for the case. So, we are talking about a minimal data set created on-demand, without the need to deliver any real data. I will help in this direction, as far as I can. What do others think about this? Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Continuing the crazy thoughts, You could have FFT/wavelet parameters per column of a raster image hard-coded to create an image on request (that I could do I think). About a vector, well a set of polygon arcs pairs can easily be stored in code and (i suppose) imported on the fly as a vector. On 30 January 2015 at 16:06, Nikos Alexandris n...@nikosalexandris.net wrote: Maybe a crazy idea, but... if access to internet isn't an option, maybe the button can create a Location and Mapset(s), and let a script create some artificial vector and raster maps? So a user can still play along with unreal data. Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 6:52 AM, Nikos Alexandris n...@nikosalexandris.net wrote: Vaclav Petras wrote: A Skip button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate. I'm very strongly opposed to this idea. You can be sure that many people will abuse this horribly without knowing what they are doing. In my eyes, GRASS should continue to impose a choice of projection system before working with data. I use an XY location for various quick-tests. It's in my generic grassdb directory, along with the other projects. I think that XY is as dangerous as LL for people who don't know or don't care about projections. I'm talking about the Skip button just because it was proposed by others. What I propose is well designed startup window with good description and a way to get some Location and Mapset quickly. On the MS Windows installer takes care of that by copying demo Location to newly created grassdata dir in Documents and creating the rc file. Is this enough? If not why? And do we want to do something similar for cases when installation is not done by GRASS GIS? If startup detects no grassdata it could just create the dir and copy the demo Location there, so the only thing needed is to press Start button. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Thanks Vaclav 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 29, 2015, at 8:53 AM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On the topic of descriptions. I left there what I had there the first time because I had no time to revise it yesterday. Location = project was there for a long time already but I'm not saying that it is good. However, there should be some suggestions, how to use GISDBASE, Location and Mapset. Otherwise, it is the same as saying nothing. The goal of the descriptions is to teach people and for this you need examples. Michael's notes (just so you don't have to dig through the thread): ### GISDBASE A GRASS GIS database directory contains one or more Locations” (no need to say that you can have more than one GISDBASE) ### Location 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.) ### Mapset 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). ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 29/01/15 16:53, Vaclav Petras wrote: On the topic of descriptions. I left there what I had there the first time because I had no time to revise it yesterday. Location = project was there for a long time already but I'm not saying that it is good. However, there should be some suggestions, how to use GISDBASE, Location and Mapset. Otherwise, it is the same as saying nothing. The goal of the descriptions is to teach people and for this you need examples. Michael's notes (just so you don't have to dig through the thread): ### GISDBASE A GRASS GIS database directory contains one or more Locations” (no need to say that you can have more than one GISDBASE) ### Location 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.” I like this second option better. ### Mapset A Mapset contains GIS data. Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location. Maybe add a little about use of mapsets: A Mapset is a subdirectory of a location and contains GIS data. Mapsets are used to organise the data into coherent subsets (by project, user, or other systems). Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location. If we don't have enough space, I'd just drop the last sentence about the PERMANENT mapset. [Looking at this I actually makes me think about the real need for 'PERMANENT'. Couldn't the location-relevant files just be stored in (possible hidden files directly in the location directory ? Or do we want to keep the notion of permanent data vs modifiable data for educational purpose ? Then again, I don't really want to open Pandora's box at this stage of the release process... ;-) ] Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 29.01.2015 18:49, Moritz Lennert wrote: ### Mapset A Mapset contains GIS data. Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location. Maybe add a little about use of mapsets: A Mapset is a subdirectory of a location and contains GIS data. Mapsets are used to organise the data into coherent subsets (by project, user, or other systems). Every Location automatically has one Mapset named PERMANENT that also contains projection information for the Location. Proposing slightly different wording: A Mapset is a subdirectory inside a Location and contains geospatial data. Mapsets are useful in organising the data into coherent subsets (by project, user, or other thematic units). If we don't have enough space, I'd just drop the last sentence about the PERMANENT mapset. [Looking at this I actually makes me think about the real need for 'PERMANENT'. Couldn't the location-relevant files just be stored in (possible hidden files directly in the location directory ? Or do we want to keep the notion of permanent data vs modifiable data for educational purpose ? Then again, I don't really want to open Pandora's box at this stage of the release process... ;-) ] Using the PERMANENT Mapset as a safety-pool, for all of the raw data, isn't a bad idea as well. Copy then elsewhere and play along. I do it most of the times. It saves time to re-import stuff, for example, if a map is irreversibly modified. Which is a matter of time to happen (and not a question of will it happen?). At the end of a project's life-cycle, stuff can be cleaned. Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Jan 29, 2015 9:47 AM, Moritz Lennert mlenn...@club.worldonline.be wrote: On 28/01/15 19:59, Vaclav Petras wrote: ... On 22/01/15 05:29, Vaclav Petras wrote: A Skip button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate. I'm very strongly opposed to this idea. I fully agree: xy is a very bad idea. Also, let's use the home and not /tmp which is on modern systems a tmpfs directory which is in RAM only and not reboot safe. You can be sure that many people will abuse this horribly without knowing what they are doing. Exactly. In my eyes, GRASS should continue to impose a choice of projection system before working with data. If we want to give people the opportunity to test GRASS, I prefer the option of a button that downloads and unpacks a very light demo location. Yes. The winGRASS installer does that already reasonably. Or, as suggested, launch latlong rather than xy etc. Markus Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 28/01/15 19:59, Vaclav Petras wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:29 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: 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. Done in r64345. Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on small screens. Please, read the previous message and commit message for a discussion and description. Generally, I like what I see, but I also have to admit that personally, and apparently contrary to many others, I do not really see as much need to change much in the GRASS startup. I just have two reactions: Location represents a project. I'm not sure I like this restriction to location=project. For my part I often use location=projection and mapset=project, but this depends. I'm afraid that such a semantic limitation in the startup screen will strongly influence users to go into just one direction... On 22/01/15 05:29, Vaclav Petras wrote: A Skip button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate. I'm very strongly opposed to this idea. You can be sure that many people will abuse this horribly without knowing what they are doing. In my eyes, GRASS should continue to impose a choice of projection system before working with data. If we want to give people the opportunity to test GRASS, I prefer the option of a button that downloads and unpacks a very light demo location. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Vaclav Petras 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. Hi Vaclav, and all. Thanks for the continuous hard working. 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. Done in r64345. Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on small screens. Please, read the previous message and commit message for a discussion and description. Moritz Lennert wrote: Generally, I like what I see, but I also have to admit that personally, and apparently contrary to many others, I do not really see as much need to change much in the GRASS startup. I just have two reactions: Location represents a project. I'm not sure I like this restriction to location=project. Me too. For my part I often use location=projection and mapset=project, but this depends. If it is any worth, I use single directories for projects.- Then Locations for projections and Mapsets to organise everything as I think is necessary underneath/inside. I'm afraid that such a semantic limitation in the startup screen will strongly influence users to go into just one direction... Yes, please be more cautious here. Vaclav Petras wrote: A Skip button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate. I'm very strongly opposed to this idea. You can be sure that many people will abuse this horribly without knowing what they are doing. In my eyes, GRASS should continue to impose a choice of projection system before working with data. I use an XY location for various quick-tests. It's in my generic grassdb directory, along with the other projects. If we want to give people the opportunity to test GRASS, I prefer the option of a button that downloads and unpacks a very light demo location. Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Is there a place to see a screen shot of what is proposed? I suggested some wording changes awhile back but I don't know if they are incorporated or not. 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 29, 2015, at 1:46 AM, Moritz Lennert mlenn...@club.worldonline.be wrote: On 28/01/15 19:59, Vaclav Petras wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:29 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com mailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: 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. Done in r64345. Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on small screens. Please, read the previous message and commit message for a discussion and description. Generally, I like what I see, but I also have to admit that personally, and apparently contrary to many others, I do not really see as much need to change much in the GRASS startup. I just have two reactions: Location represents a project. I'm not sure I like this restriction to location=project. For my part I often use location=projection and mapset=project, but this depends. I'm afraid that such a semantic limitation in the startup screen will strongly influence users to go into just one direction... On 22/01/15 05:29, Vaclav Petras wrote: A Skip button can be added next to Start button, once implemented. I think that XY location in /tmp/grassdata would be appropriate. I'm very strongly opposed to this idea. You can be sure that many people will abuse this horribly without knowing what they are doing. In my eyes, GRASS should continue to impose a choice of projection system before working with data. If we want to give people the opportunity to test GRASS, I prefer the option of a button that downloads and unpacks a very light demo location. Moritz ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Here I put the updated banner: http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Identity#Proposals_2 attached is the jpg label. Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 14:12 +0100, Vincent Bain a écrit : Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 18:19 +0530, Yann Chemin a écrit : I wonder if Vincent could make it with GRASS GIS in Fira Sans as in the splash screen? Yes, in a while. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Is there a place to see a screen shot of what is proposed? I suggested some wording changes awhile back but I don't know if they are incorporated or not. Attached the draft version from trunk (updated 2hs ago). Obviously yet with the old logo etc. Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Could we have a proposed new banner in trunk too. It really helps having it on your computer... Maybe the smallest one makes sense for all screen sizes http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/File:GRASSGIS_welcome_banner3.jpg I wonder if Vincent could make it with GRASS GIS in Fira Sans as in the splash screen? Cheers, Yann On 29 January 2015 at 18:03, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Is there a place to see a screen shot of what is proposed? I suggested some wording changes awhile back but I don't know if they are incorporated or not. Attached the draft version from trunk (updated 2hs ago). Obviously yet with the old logo etc. Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 18:19 +0530, Yann Chemin a écrit : I wonder if Vincent could make it with GRASS GIS in Fira Sans as in the splash screen? Yes, in a while. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
+1 Nice ! On 29 January 2015 at 19:15, Vincent Bain b...@toraval.fr wrote: Here I put the updated banner: http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Identity#Proposals_2 attached is the jpg label. Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 14:12 +0100, Vincent Bain a écrit : Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 18:19 +0530, Yann Chemin a écrit : I wonder if Vincent could make it with GRASS GIS in Fira Sans as in the splash screen? Yes, in a while. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Nice! 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 29, 2015, at 6:45 AM, Vincent Bain b...@toraval.fr wrote: Here I put the updated banner: http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Identity#Proposals_2 attached is the jpg label. Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 14:12 +0100, Vincent Bain a écrit : Le jeudi 29 janvier 2015 à 18:19 +0530, Yann Chemin a écrit : I wonder if Vincent could make it with GRASS GIS in Fira Sans as in the splash screen? Yes, in a while. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev GRASSGIS_welcome_banner4.jpg ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On the topic of descriptions. I left there what I had there the first time because I had no time to revise it yesterday. Location = project was there for a long time already but I'm not saying that it is good. However, there should be some suggestions, how to use GISDBASE, Location and Mapset. Otherwise, it is the same as saying nothing. The goal of the descriptions is to teach people and for this you need examples. Michael's notes (just so you don't have to dig through the thread): ### GISDBASE A GRASS GIS database directory contains one or more Locations” (no need to say that you can have more than one GISDBASE) ### Location 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.) ### Mapset 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). ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, 2015-01-28 19:59 GMT+01:00 Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com: Done in r64345. Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on small screens. thanks. I would vote to make description text gray. Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 9:29 PM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-28 19:59 GMT+01:00 Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com: Done in r64345. Good, now we have a better discussion base. Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on small screens. thanks. I would vote to make description text gray. Martin Yes, I thought the same: the explanations in a grey-ish color. thanks Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:29 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Vaclav Petras 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. Done in r64345. Now the change of minimal height is needed to actually make it work on small screens. Please, read the previous message and commit message for a discussion and description. http://trac.osgeo.org/grass/changeset/64345 ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
2015-01-23 21:54 GMT+02:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 4:34 PM, Margherita Di Leo direg...@gmail.com wrote: No, I am talking about a minimal welcome screen to replace the current welcome screen. This screen appears (current behaviour) before GRASS GIS is started. Markus M If I got you right, your proposal is to replace: Launch GRASS - click on location - click on mapset - click on Start with: Launch GRASS - click on change location - click on location - click on change mapset - click on mapset - click on Start If it is so, I vote with all of my four against. If you wan to make startup screen more easy, just 1) hide GISDBASE a bit (instead of showing it as a input field, display as a text with change button); 2) add Import data button that starts Location wizard but by guessing parameters based on selected file (with an option to change, of course). Having a project set up screen as a first screen while launching some program is not so uncommon in area of pro software. I don't see how users would benefit if they would be dropped in a some random location with most of menu items being not completely functional, add raster/vector showing empty lists etc. Even worse - there are plenty of ESRI Shapefiles without .prj and other datasets without SRS definitions - users would just start to do their work in XY locations till it will lead to furtherer problems (Why in ArcGIS is see those data together, but in GRASS I don't? - one of most common complaints of my students. Hint - messed up SRS definitions masked by easy to use functionality. How should area / distance be calculated in XY location for LL data?!?) Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Maris. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Margherita Di Leo direg...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: That is why I suggested a minimal (minimal information content) welcome screen with one OK button and one change button. The OK button should be prominently placed, the user must immediately see that all is needed to get started is to press OK. This welcome screen could be written such that practically nothing but wx needs to be imported, which means that the splash screen can go away. Because of the little amount of content (text + buttons), there would be enough space for graphics even on small screens. You could have drop-down boxes for location and mapset to offer a choice instead of fixed text. Do I understand correctly that such drop-down boxes to change current location and mapset are to be found at the stage when GRASS is already started? Meaning that you are in a XY empty location and you can choose to go directly to a different one without restarting GRASS? If this is your proposal, I think that this would indeed do a huge difference to anyone working in grass, not only newcomers, in terms of practicality That's already there. I am not sure if it makes such a huge difference. Anna -- Best regards, Dr. Margherita DI LEO Scientific / technical project officer European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 23 January 2015 at 22:18, Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Margherita Di Leo direg...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: That is why I suggested a minimal (minimal information content) welcome screen with one OK button and one change button. The OK button should be prominently placed, the user must immediately see that all is needed to get started is to press OK. This welcome screen could be written such that practically nothing but wx needs to be imported, which means that the splash screen can go away. Because of the little amount of content (text + buttons), there would be enough space for graphics even on small screens. You could have drop-down boxes for location and mapset to offer a choice instead of fixed text. Do I understand correctly that such drop-down boxes to change current location and mapset are to be found at the stage when GRASS is already started? Meaning that you are in a XY empty location and you can choose to go directly to a different one without restarting GRASS? If this is your proposal, I think that this would indeed do a huge difference to anyone working in grass, not only newcomers, in terms of practicality That's already there. I am not sure if it makes such a huge difference. It is there indeed, but there is here an element of perceived availability that maybe needed, or maybe perceived focus in the work flow... Anna -- Best regards, Dr. Margherita DI LEO Scientific / technical project officer European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Yann Chemin wrote: hmm that would be cool ! running r(v).in.* without GISDBASE or Location or mapset could trigger a wizard to set them up... Markus Metz: This is the current location wizard. The original topic was import and on-the-fly reprojection without the need to create a new location. This can be easily done by either a new script that calls r.in.gdal/v.in.ogr + r.proj/v.proj which creates the new location internally and deletes it when done, or a wizard doing the same thing. The user does not even notice that a temporary location was created. Sextante for example works this way. Margherita Di Leo wrote: This would be lovely to have! Perhaps using ogr2ogr / gdalwarp before importing would be even faster. That would be a Huge time-saver. Thanks, Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 1:14 PM, Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.com wrote: hmm that would be cool ! running r(v).in.* without GISDBASE or Location or mapset could trigger a wizard to set them up... This is the current location wizard. The original topic was import and on-the-fly reprojection without the need to create a new location. This can be easily done by either a new script that calls r.in.gdal/v.in.ogr + r.proj/v.proj which creates the new location internally and deletes it when done, or a wizard doing the same thing. The user does not even notice that a temporary location was created. Sextante for example works this way. This would be lovely to have! Perhaps using ogr2ogr / gdalwarp before importing would be even faster. -- Best regards, Dr. Margherita DI LEO Scientific / technical project officer European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 4:34 PM, Margherita Di Leo direg...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: That is why I suggested a minimal (minimal information content) welcome screen with one OK button and one change button. The OK button should be prominently placed, the user must immediately see that all is needed to get started is to press OK. This welcome screen could be written such that practically nothing but wx needs to be imported, which means that the splash screen can go away. Because of the little amount of content (text + buttons), there would be enough space for graphics even on small screens. You could have drop-down boxes for location and mapset to offer a choice instead of fixed text. Do I understand correctly that such drop-down boxes to change current location and mapset are to be found at the stage when GRASS is already started? No, I am talking about a minimal welcome screen to replace the current welcome screen. This screen appears (current behaviour) before GRASS GIS is started. Markus M Meaning that you are in a XY empty location and you can choose to go directly to a different one without restarting GRASS? If this is your proposal, I think that this would indeed do a huge difference to anyone working in grass, not only newcomers, in terms of practicality -- Best regards, Dr. Margherita DI LEO Scientific / technical project officer European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 9:20 AM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: Hi, my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. Let's solve this. Otherwise it is too sad. I agree, but I think we should be careful to weight in the reasons why users stay with GRASS GIS as well. But that is perhaps not as much about creating a better/alternative welcome screen and more about some of the more radical changes proposed. Markus PS: the current screen may optionally remain. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 23 January 2015 at 16:49, Rainer M Krug rai...@krugs.de wrote: Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.com writes: On 23 January 2015 at 15:46, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-23 9:20 GMT+01:00 Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org: my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. I have met a lot of GIS specialists who told me: I tried several times to use GRASS in different decades and I end up with the same result, I didn't managed to get my data in, so I gave up. Yes, I also had those experiences told to me. Is it possible to open GRASS GIS wxGUI without setting the GISDB/Location/mapset yet? Then from inside the opened software you will need to go through those steps anyway before doing anything... Would that make any psychological difference? I think this would make a huge difference - especially if the creation could be done by triggerd upon import and hmm that would be cool ! running r(v).in.* without GISDBASE or Location or mapset could trigger a wizard to set them up... - asking for a directory (for the db), - name of the location, - name of the mapset, and - taking the other parameter (projection, extend) from the data to be imported. Until a mapset is opened, the non-usable menu items could be greyed out. Sounds like a nice option, as it will direct newbies to modules that import data (then trigger the creation wizard) Rainer It' a sign in my eyes that we should think how to simplify this step ;-) Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 23 January 2015 at 08:34, Maris Nartiss maris@gmail.com wrote: Please, let's not try to compete with QGIS in ease of use, as we will lose due to lack of manpower and different goals (quality and power over ease of use). Spatial data is hard. High quality analysis is hard. Let's keep GRASS professional by providing easy way how to do it right (and not a easy way how to do it wrong). +100 Just 0.02 Māris. -- ciao Luca http://gis.cri.fmach.it/delucchi/ www.lucadelu.org ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 5:53 AM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Hi Vaclav, To be clear, I agree with you that GRASS should not start with a wizard and had did not intend anyone to think that. The ‘step 1, step 2, step 3’ was simply to put this as text on the startup dialog, to help users know which step to do in what order. The more radical suggestion that I made today involves fundamental change of how GRASS works. Change the file structure to GISDBASE/mapsets=working directories and get rid of locations as folders. Store projection information in a different way than as locations. Maybe store projection info in each mapset, or maybe some other way. Maybe each mapset still only contains maps from a single projection to keep maps of the same projection together. That seems like fundamental to me, by allowing to mix maps with different projections in one mapset we would loose the checks that ensures the correct handling of data, one of the very strong points of GRASS. It may be necessary to do other things to make sure that users don’t try to combine maps of different projections. This would make it possible to have a simpler startup. But it would take more thought and some programming to make it work. The current database set up is really robust (it is fairly difficult to mess up the database) and at the same time flexible (one can easily move around mapsets or location/mapsets). Perhaps the same can be achieved in different ways, but please let's not sacrifice this just to make it possible to make a simpler startup. The whole issue of locations and mapsets may be confusing for the first time users, but in my experience this is just an initial hurdle, after which the whole structure is actually quite helpful in keeping one on top of the data (especially if you have to deal with different data sources with different projections). 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 22, 2015, at 8:22 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: For this release, we need to focus on just tweaking the current startup screen and doing better graphics for the splash. The other topic is a much bigger issue. Not everybody considers my suggestion as useful-enough change and there is the hard freeze (although the functionality changes are almost zero). As a result, I don't plan to commit it to release branch now. However, I consider it as a great improvement which I definitively want to use and I think it is very beneficial for beginners, so I will commit that to trunk when I get to it. Then we can continue in the other improvements. To the other things. I also consider data in different projections as much bigger issue. GRASS has all the tools as described and also implemented by Markus Metz but it is too much for beginners. We should definitively make it more accessible (but it is also interesting business opportunity :-). I still don't understand what the user could in the dummy/LL/XY/demo location besides looking to menus and being confused from wrongly imported data or no imported data at all because of projection issues. Michael suggests to replace startup by some wizard and this is what QGIS is doing. So, is putting everything to wizard better then the window + optional wizard? We can go that way but note the difference between QGIS and GRASS, when QGIS is running the wizard, the app is already there, wizard is just an additional window. For GRASS, it would the window you get which might be strange. Even stranger if the window would be just some small one with Will start in location xxx and Change and Continue buttons. It would be also useful to analyze why the thing which is done on MS Windows by the standalone installer is not enough. There should be a demo location already and set as last used. Also NC SPM can be downloaded, should it be checked by default? Does somebody has a opinion on using Location, GRASS Location, or GRASS location consistently? You can see also LOCATION here and there in GRASS but I wouldn't go that way. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Jan 23, 2015 9:26 AM, Paulo van Breugel p.vanbreu...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 9:20 AM, Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org wrote: Hi, my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. Let's solve this. Otherwise it is too sad. I agree, but I think we should be careful to weight in the reasons why users stay with GRASS GIS as well. If you reread my comment, it was about people new to GRASS. My personal objective with the new release us to get the user community enlarged. But that is perhaps not as much about creating a better/alternative welcome screen Indeed it is. Believe me, I am following the community for 15+ years now. and more about some of the more radical changes proposed. This is not related to this thread but something for GRASS 8. Markus PS: the current screen may optionally remain. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 23 January 2015 at 15:46, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-23 9:20 GMT+01:00 Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org: my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. I have met a lot of GIS specialists who told me: I tried several times to use GRASS in different decades and I end up with the same result, I didn't managed to get my data in, so I gave up. Yes, I also had those experiences told to me. Is it possible to open GRASS GIS wxGUI without setting the GISDB/Location/mapset yet? Then from inside the opened software you will need to go through those steps anyway before doing anything... Would that make any psychological difference? It' a sign in my eyes that we should think how to simplify this step ;-) Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.com writes: On 23 January 2015 at 15:46, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-23 9:20 GMT+01:00 Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org: my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. I have met a lot of GIS specialists who told me: I tried several times to use GRASS in different decades and I end up with the same result, I didn't managed to get my data in, so I gave up. Yes, I also had those experiences told to me. Is it possible to open GRASS GIS wxGUI without setting the GISDB/Location/mapset yet? Then from inside the opened software you will need to go through those steps anyway before doing anything... Would that make any psychological difference? I think this would make a huge difference - especially if the creation could be done by triggerd upon import and - asking for a directory (for the db), - name of the location, - name of the mapset, and - taking the other parameter (projection, extend) from the data to be imported. Until a mapset is opened, the non-usable menu items could be greyed out. Rainer It' a sign in my eyes that we should think how to simplify this step ;-) Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, 2015-01-23 9:20 GMT+01:00 Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org: my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. I have met a lot of GIS specialists who told me: I tried several times to use GRASS in different decades and I end up with the same result, I didn't managed to get my data in, so I gave up. It' a sign in my eyes that we should think how to simplify this step ;-) Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-23 9:20 GMT+01:00 Markus Neteler nete...@osgeo.org: my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. I have met a lot of GIS specialists who told me: I tried several times to use GRASS in different decades and I end up with the same result, I didn't managed to get my data in, so I gave up. It' a sign in my eyes that we should think how to simplify this step ;-) That isn't a terribly good sign indeed... but, and I am asking, not trying to counter your argument.. is this not often a result to stricter data requirements of GRASS rather then difficulty of (start-up) menu's? I know GRASS reasonably well, but still am sometimes struggling to import a data layer that opens without problem in QGIS (using the right projection, etc.). Anyway, that's another subject of course. Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, my motivation to discuss the current welcome screen is that too many potential new users try to launch GRASS, do not get past that screen and walk away (too difficult). Yes, and they will likely not read the manual but just take another GIS. This is a multiple times reported fact. Let's solve this. Otherwise it is too sad. Markus PS: the current screen may optionally remain. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: That is why I suggested a minimal (minimal information content) welcome screen with one OK button and one change button. The OK button should be prominently placed, the user must immediately see that all is needed to get started is to press OK. This welcome screen could be written such that practically nothing but wx needs to be imported, which means that the splash screen can go away. Because of the little amount of content (text + buttons), there would be enough space for graphics even on small screens. You could have drop-down boxes for location and mapset to offer a choice instead of fixed text. Do I understand correctly that such drop-down boxes to change current location and mapset are to be found at the stage when GRASS is already started? Meaning that you are in a XY empty location and you can choose to go directly to a different one without restarting GRASS? If this is your proposal, I think that this would indeed do a huge difference to anyone working in grass, not only newcomers, in terms of practicality -- Best regards, Dr. Margherita DI LEO Scientific / technical project officer European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 3:53 AM, Nikos Alexandris n...@nikosalexandris.net wrote: On 22.01.2015 10:32, Helmut Kudrnovsky wrote: 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? I agree. I can't see any benefit to be automatically in a LL location, as in many cases your data will be in other SRSs. what may be make sense: define your projection/srs by import your first data and offer this option in a prominent way in the welcome screen and not hidden in the location wizzard as at the moment. +1 This is was my suggestion allows us to add Location from data/GIS file. Default place would be under New, Rename and Delete buttons together with Unpack location from ZIP, Create LL, and Create XY. Alternative placement would be at the top or bottom of the Select GRASS Location group box. This could serve to both novices and advanced users unlike other solutions. Skip, and start GRASS session button can be at the bottom. The functionality as described by Markus Metz makes sense, create grassdata in user home and get demolocation from source code. We can also just create this location automatically if the GISDBASE is not set (1) or is empty, do the think which would Skip button do and then you can just use standard Start GRASS session. The advantage of my suggestion is that we can actually make it to the release of 7.0 (2) and then add improvements later. (1) Now, we show an error dialog which looks that everything is wrong which after OK, shows Browse dialog which without reading is hard to understand and this is what people starting GRASS for the first time get. I replaced a lot of these dialogs (errors or just warnings) by the message shown in the windows. This one will be next. (2) It's basically done, with user testing (it does not require much) and backports it should be ready on Monday morning. Nikos and what I've learned from GRASS GIS :-) when using other GIS software: first check SRSs of my data, open GIS software, define SRS and then load data. my 0.02c ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 22.01.2015 09:51, Yann Chemin wrote: http://docs.qgis.org/2.2/ko/docs/training_manual/grass/grass_setup.html http://docs.qgis.org/2.2/ko/_images/grass_folder.png Spanish text https://ecoslackware.wordpress.com/tag/grass-qgis-plugin/ Italian text http://qgis4dummies.wikidot.com/grass-plugin Right, I forgot the global map indicating the Extent with a red-bordered box. This is an absolute winner! Nikos ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? I agree. I can't see any benefit to be automatically in a LL location, as in many cases your data will be in other SRSs. what may be make sense: define your projection/srs by import your first data and offer this option in a prominent way in the welcome screen and not hidden in the location wizzard as at the moment. and what I've learned from GRASS GIS :-) when using other GIS software: first check SRSs of my data, open GIS software, define SRS and then load data. my 0.02c - best regards Helmut -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Making-start-of-GRASS-GIS-easier-for-newcomers-tp5182982p5183058.html Sent from the Grass - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:15 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM, 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 think that you have to go all the work anyway and the dummy location is there just to show that it is possible. There are some potential problems, for example how it works now with the .bash_history file? 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? 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. This is a good point. I can see that. However, manual is also useful for this. This is what I use. Works for command line programs too. 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. A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). Markus M ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Nikos Alexandris n...@nikosalexandris.net writes: On 22.01.2015 09:51, Yann Chemin wrote: http://docs.qgis.org/2.2/ko/docs/training_manual/grass/grass_setup.html http://docs.qgis.org/2.2/ko/_images/grass_folder.png Spanish text https://ecoslackware.wordpress.com/tag/grass-qgis-plugin/ Italian text http://qgis4dummies.wikidot.com/grass-plugin Right, I forgot the global map indicating the Extent with a red-bordered box. This is an absolute winner! Absolutely - Quite often, I used QGIS to create the location, then left QGIS and continued working in GRASS GIS. Nikos -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Margherita Di Leo direg...@gmail.com wrote: ... I understand that for some users GRASS looks strange at first sight, because I'm aware that nearly nobody reads the manual *before* trying to start a new software. Yes, confirmed... Because humans work like this, at first they want to try, and later, if the process of natural curiosity is supported by positive feedback of experience, they keep on going, learn new stuff, read the manual etc. Right, this was my point. What I don't understand here is how an empty lat lon location would help in this. Well, the idea is to let the user *open* the software. If you open Libreoffice writer | Word, you get an empty text document (often in letter size, argh). If you open QGIS, you are in QGIS (likewise other GIS). Why not also GRASS (optionally)? And in this case, latlong is the compromise SRS. If the purpose is to allow the user to explore the software without any previous knowledge In the first place I was referring to people who come from other GIS. Especially those will not first read the manual because they'll claim to know enough about GIS. (well actually something can be done also here, we could create a getting started video) Please no :-) why not allowing the user to double click on their map and open grass from it. This would not need any change in the grass structure itself, it could just be a demo. I think to a script in python that reads the info from a file (gdalinfo), creates a demo location, opens grass and import the file. Still you have the welcome screen barrier here and no direct (optional) access to the main menu of the software. best Markus ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com writes: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:15 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM, 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 think that you have to go all the work anyway and the dummy location is there just to show that it is possible. There are some potential problems, for example how it works now with the .bash_history file? 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? 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. This is a good point. I can see that. However, manual is also useful for this. This is what I use. Works for command line programs too. 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. A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y Which would be the last opened mapset or, if opened for the first time, the demo mapset? nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. I would add a third button which says Start in demo location to make it easier to return to the demo location after having already used GRASS GIS - for e.g. running examples and tests of other applications which use the demo dataset. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). This sounds like a good compromise. And if then there is a nice QGIS like dialog to create a new location / mapset including projections, to start GRASS would be much easier. Thinking of it - a history of recently used mapsets on the welcome screen, which shows the projection, extent and the file path, is something which would be really useful. Cheers, Rainer Markus M -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:48 AM, Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:15 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM, 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 think that you have to go all the work anyway and the dummy location is there just to show that it is possible. There are some potential problems, for example how it works now with the .bash_history file? 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? 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. This is a good point. I can see that. However, manual is also useful for this. This is what I use. Works for command line programs too. 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. A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). I think it is very important to create the grass database in a visible location (so yes, the users home is ok). Putting it in a tmp folder as proposed earlier could lead to much more confusion (where is the data gone). To me this sounds like the best alternative offered so far. But what I am missing (sort of) in this discussion is that the whole location/mapset is part of the GRASS database. One can make it very simple to just start GRASS GIS, but at some point the user probably want to know where the data is.. especially when dealing with data in different projections. (I am sure there are many users that have to deal with data in different projections). The current setup presenting the database (structure) at start is in that sense very helpful (I have limited experience in teaching GRASS, but I checked with somebody who is just now starting with GRASS and she was actually happy with the start up screen for that very reason). Markus M ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:01 AM, Rainer M Krug rai...@krugs.de wrote: Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com writes: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:15 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM, 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 think that you have to go all the work anyway and the dummy location is there just to show that it is possible. There are some potential problems, for example how it works now with the .bash_history file? 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? 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. This is a good point. I can see that. However, manual is also useful for this. This is what I use. Works for command line programs too. 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. A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y Which would be the last opened mapset or, if opened for the first time, the demo mapset? nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. I would add a third button which says Start in demo location to make it easier to return to the demo location after having already used GRASS GIS - for e.g. running examples and tests of other applications which use the demo dataset. I disagree, keep the welcome screen as simple as possible, just short of having no welcome screen at all. If you want to change the location/mapset, you can click on Change. With demolocation I mean the demolocation embedded in the source tree, not one of the sample datasets. Markus M The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). This sounds like a good compromise. And if then there is a nice QGIS like dialog to create a new location / mapset including projections, to start GRASS would be much easier. Thinking of it - a history of recently used mapsets on the welcome screen, which shows the projection, extent and the file path, is something which would be really useful. Cheers, Rainer Markus M -- Rainer M. Krug email: Raineratkrugsdotde PGP: 0x0F52F982 ___ grass-dev mailing list
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM, 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 understand that for some users GRASS looks strange at first sight, because I'm aware that nearly nobody reads the manual *before* trying to start a new software. Because humans work like this, at first they want to try, and later, if the process of natural curiosity is supported by positive feedback of experience, they keep on going, learn new stuff, read the manual etc. What I don't understand here is how an empty lat lon location would help in this. If the purpose is to allow the user to explore the software without any previous knowledge (well actually something can be done also here, we could create a getting started video) why not allowing the user to double click on their map and open grass from it. This would not need any change in the grass structure itself, it could just be a demo. I think to a script in python that reads the info from a file (gdalinfo), creates a demo location, opens grass and import the file. Just thoughts cheers, madi -- Best regards, Dr. Margherita DI LEO Scientific / technical project officer European Commission - DG JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) Via Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261 Tel. +39 0332 78 3600 margherita.di-...@jrc.ec.europa.eu Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 22.01.2015 10:32, Helmut Kudrnovsky wrote: 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? I agree. I can't see any benefit to be automatically in a LL location, as in many cases your data will be in other SRSs. what may be make sense: define your projection/srs by import your first data and offer this option in a prominent way in the welcome screen and not hidden in the location wizzard as at the moment. +1 Nikos and what I've learned from GRASS GIS :-) when using other GIS software: first check SRSs of my data, open GIS software, define SRS and then load data. my 0.02c ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Markus Metz wrote: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. That sounds nice! And let the Change lead to a series of simple, yet distinct, 4 steps to create: 1) Location (define the SRS, best by getting it from georeferenced data, if available) 2) Propose to import data in the PERMANENT Mapset, and shortly and clearly inform about PERMANENT vs. Other Mapsets 3) Propose to adjust the Extent Resolution to the imported data, if available. If not, propose to either manually define them, or give a global map to draw on an extent? Well, 3 steps. Or something like that. Nikos The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On 22.01.2015 10:41, Rainer M Krug wrote: Nikos Alexandris n...@nikosalexandris.net writes: On 22.01.2015 09:51, Yann Chemin wrote: http://docs.qgis.org/2.2/ko/docs/training_manual/grass/grass_setup.html http://docs.qgis.org/2.2/ko/_images/grass_folder.png Spanish text https://ecoslackware.wordpress.com/tag/grass-qgis-plugin/ Italian text http://qgis4dummies.wikidot.com/grass-plugin Right, I forgot the global map indicating the Extent with a red-bordered box. This is an absolute winner! Absolutely - Quite often, I used QGIS to create the location, then left QGIS and continued working in GRASS GIS. Yep, I do this very frequently with beginners. I did that in India too... forgot to mention. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, 2015-01-22 16:27 GMT+01:00 Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com: Any opinion on what can we do for this release? I would say that it's topic for 7.1 or partially for 7.0.1. Release branch is currently in hard freeze, so only bug fixes should go there. Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, 2015-01-22 16:54 GMT+01:00 Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com: I would say that it's topic for 7.1 or partially for 7.0.1. Release branch is currently in hard freeze, so only bug fixes should go there. Right. But we still should decide on the graphics (different thread). yes, it make sense to me. Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:46 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 16:27 GMT+01:00 Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com: Any opinion on what can we do for this release? I would say that it's topic for 7.1 or partially for 7.0.1. Release branch is currently in hard freeze, so only bug fixes should go there. Right. But we still should decide on the graphics (different thread). Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
+1 even better if we can test this on svn any time soon, it is often more practical to try... On 22 January 2015 at 20:11, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. Not only beginners, I work -always- with mixed data, I spend an enourmous amount of time juggling with creating adhoc temporary locations only to use them once for reprojection to a main Location. This would transform my daily work... But indeed it is another topic... On 22 January 2015 at 20:57, Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember correctly, I am not sure why not in home. What I struggle with when explaining students how to use GRASS is not really the welcome screen but reprojecting data. If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. This is a topic for a different thread, how exactly it should be implemented. No matter what we decide to do with the starting of grass, this should be implemented. Especially when user will start with empty location, they will want to import their data and then the reprojection is crucial. I saw a lot of cases when they just override the projection check to overcome the error they get and don't read. Any opinion on what can we do for this release? Anna -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember correctly, I am not sure why not in home. What I struggle with when explaining students how to use GRASS is not really the welcome screen but reprojecting data. If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. This is a topic for a different thread, how exactly it should be implemented. No matter what we decide to do with the starting of grass, this should be implemented. Especially when user will start with empty location, they will want to import their data and then the reprojection is crucial. I saw a lot of cases when they just override the projection check to overcome the error they get and don't read. Any opinion on what can we do for this release? Anna -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi Vaclav, To be clear, I agree with you that GRASS should not start with a wizard and had did not intend anyone to think that. The ‘step 1, step 2, step 3’ was simply to put this as text on the startup dialog, to help users know which step to do in what order. The more radical suggestion that I made today involves fundamental change of how GRASS works. Change the file structure to GISDBASE/mapsets=working directories and get rid of locations as folders. Store projection information in a different way than as locations. Maybe store projection info in each mapset, or maybe some other way. Maybe each mapset still only contains maps from a single projection to keep maps of the same projection together. It may be necessary to do other things to make sure that users don’t try to combine maps of different projections. This would make it possible to have a simpler startup. But it would take more thought and some programming to make it work. 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 22, 2015, at 8:22 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edumailto:michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: For this release, we need to focus on just tweaking the current startup screen and doing better graphics for the splash. The other topic is a much bigger issue. Not everybody considers my suggestion as useful-enough change and there is the hard freeze (although the functionality changes are almost zero). As a result, I don't plan to commit it to release branch now. However, I consider it as a great improvement which I definitively want to use and I think it is very beneficial for beginners, so I will commit that to trunk when I get to it. Then we can continue in the other improvements. To the other things. I also consider data in different projections as much bigger issue. GRASS has all the tools as described and also implemented by Markus Metz but it is too much for beginners. We should definitively make it more accessible (but it is also interesting business opportunity :-). I still don't understand what the user could in the dummy/LL/XY/demo location besides looking to menus and being confused from wrongly imported data or no imported data at all because of projection issues. Michael suggests to replace startup by some wizard and this is what QGIS is doing. So, is putting everything to wizard better then the window + optional wizard? We can go that way but note the difference between QGIS and GRASS, when QGIS is running the wizard, the app is already there, wizard is just an additional window. For GRASS, it would the window you get which might be strange. Even stranger if the window would be just some small one with Will start in location xxx and Change and Continue buttons. It would be also useful to analyze why the thing which is done on MS Windows by the standalone installer is not enough. There should be a demo location already and set as last used. Also NC SPM can be downloaded, should it be checked by default? Does somebody has a opinion on using Location, GRASS Location, or GRASS location consistently? You can see also LOCATION here and there in GRASS but I wouldn't go that way. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: For this release, we need to focus on just tweaking the current startup screen and doing better graphics for the splash. The other topic is a much bigger issue. Not everybody considers my suggestion as useful-enough change and there is the hard freeze (although the functionality changes are almost zero). As a result, I don't plan to commit it to release branch now. However, I consider it as a great improvement which I definitively want to use and I think it is very beneficial for beginners, so I will commit that to trunk when I get to it. Then we can continue in the other improvements. To the other things. I also consider data in different projections as much bigger issue. GRASS has all the tools as described and also implemented by Markus Metz but it is too much for beginners. We should definitively make it more accessible (but it is also interesting business opportunity :-). I still don't understand what the user could in the dummy/LL/XY/demo location besides looking to menus and being confused from wrongly imported data or no imported data at all because of projection issues. Michael suggests to replace startup by some wizard and this is what QGIS is doing. So, is putting everything to wizard better then the window + optional wizard? We can go that way but note the difference between QGIS and GRASS, when QGIS is running the wizard, the app is already there, wizard is just an additional window. For GRASS, it would the window you get which might be strange. Even stranger if the window would be just some small one with Will start in location xxx and Change and Continue buttons. It would be also useful to analyze why the thing which is done on MS Windows by the standalone installer is not enough. There should be a demo location already and set as last used. Also NC SPM can be downloaded, should it be checked by default? Does somebody has a opinion on using Location, GRASS Location, or GRASS location consistently? You can see also LOCATION here and there in GRASS but I wouldn't go that way. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
Hi MIchael, Are we going to yet another branch from the original topic :-) I believe the fundamental change you speak about is worth discussing for GRASS 8. I also believe that the on-the-fly reprojection on import is a feature we all agree is (very) needed (GRASS 8). Finally, I believe that Vaclav small changes to the welcome page are worth agreeing upon. On 23 January 2015 at 10:23, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Hi Vaclav, To be clear, I agree with you that GRASS should not start with a wizard and had did not intend anyone to think that. The ‘step 1, step 2, step 3’ was simply to put this as text on the startup dialog, to help users know which step to do in what order. The more radical suggestion that I made today involves fundamental change of how GRASS works. Change the file structure to GISDBASE/mapsets=working directories and get rid of locations as folders. Store projection information in a different way than as locations. Maybe store projection info in each mapset, or maybe some other way. Maybe each mapset still only contains maps from a single projection to keep maps of the same projection together. It may be necessary to do other things to make sure that users don’t try to combine maps of different projections. This would make it possible to have a simpler startup. But it would take more thought and some programming to make it work. 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 22, 2015, at 8:22 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: For this release, we need to focus on just tweaking the current startup screen and doing better graphics for the splash. The other topic is a much bigger issue. Not everybody considers my suggestion as useful-enough change and there is the hard freeze (although the functionality changes are almost zero). As a result, I don't plan to commit it to release branch now. However, I consider it as a great improvement which I definitively want to use and I think it is very beneficial for beginners, so I will commit that to trunk when I get to it. Then we can continue in the other improvements. To the other things. I also consider data in different projections as much bigger issue. GRASS has all the tools as described and also implemented by Markus Metz but it is too much for beginners. We should definitively make it more accessible (but it is also interesting business opportunity :-). I still don't understand what the user could in the dummy/LL/XY/demo location besides looking to menus and being confused from wrongly imported data or no imported data at all because of projection issues. Michael suggests to replace startup by some wizard and this is what QGIS is doing. So, is putting everything to wizard better then the window + optional wizard? We can go that way but note the difference between QGIS and GRASS, when QGIS is running the wizard, the app is already there, wizard is just an additional window. For GRASS, it would the window you get which might be strange. Even stranger if the window would be just some small one with Will start in location xxx and Change and Continue buttons. It would be also useful to analyze why the thing which is done on MS Windows by the standalone installer is not enough. There should be a demo location already and set as last used. Also NC SPM can be downloaded, should it be checked by default? Does somebody has a opinion on using Location, GRASS Location, or GRASS location consistently? You can see also LOCATION here and there in GRASS but I wouldn't go that way. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
I fully support Anna here. Again, in addition -the startup screen - as it is now - gives a good overview over existing data in the GRASSS DB, that is valuable information for me -probably hiding the path to the GISDBASE (once that is defined in the user profile) behind a button (there is already a “Browse” button anyway) may tempt student or other beginners less to create new GISDBASE folder at every startup (which is what I saw a couple of times, because this was the first thing we did at a course). Yet, a reasonable predefined path might be an even better solution in this regards. -I am still a bit skeptical regarding the a lat/long default location. If people use it, they probably either do stupid things to their data (as Anna mentioned) or run stupid analysis which are not technically sound. Or they run into problems e.g. regarding reprojection quite soon… That could be worse than a challenging startup… If they do not use it, I guess they wonder what it is for … -Since the Location / Mapset is a fundamental in GRASS, I am not sure if it really does good to hide it. -Would not a “wizard” (like e.g. the three steps Michaled proposed) which shows up only at first time startup (when no relevant information is in the user profile) be able to provide enough guidance for new users? Vaclav`s subtle improvements look good by the way. Sorry if I am a bit conservative, that is only because you all created a remarkably piece of software and I a am happy that I can use it freely every day at work… ;-) However I also like an experimental approach to GIS, so give it a shot and let`s see… As for the reprojection at import (I would be happy about such a feature too), there are already two (duplicate) tickets in trac: https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2208 https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2486 (I just removed the duplicate) Cheers Stefan From: grass-dev-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:grass-dev-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Anna Petrášová I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember correctly, I am not sure why not in home. What I struggle with when explaining students how to use GRASS is not really the welcome screen but reprojecting data. If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. This is a topic for a different thread, how exactly it should be implemented. No matter what we decide to do with the starting of grass, this should be implemented. Especially when user will start with empty location, they will want to import their data and then the reprojection is crucial. I saw a lot of cases when they just override the projection check to overcome the error they get and don't read. Any opinion on what can we do for this release? Anna -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
For this release, we need to focus on just tweaking the current startup screen and doing better graphics for the splash. The other topic is a much bigger issue. The reasons that GRASS just can’t open and then load a file like a word processor are multiple and related. Foremost is the underlying structure of the geospatial data that GRASS uses. The GISDBASE/location/mapset structure organizes the location and the format of the data. A word processor like LibreOffice can open a file from anywhere, in any format that it can read, modify it, and save it to anywhere the computer user has access to. A GRASS user can ONLY open GIS data from a mapset within the current location within the current database. A GIS file modified or created can ONLY be saved within the current mapset. A non-GRASS GIS file can be imported into the current mapset, but ONLY if it has the same projection as the current location. Any GRASS user must encounter these interactions of file location, format, and projection before using GIS data. So allowing a user to start the program before facing this only kicks the can down the road a short distance. QGIS uses shapefiles and (IIRC) geotiffs for its GIS data. These are pretty portable and can be stored anywhere, and include projection information with them (or they should). Arc is more like GRASS. I’m not sure about the current version, but in prior versions at least, you could not even move Arc directories without messing up the program’s ability to read the data correctly. Both QGIS and Arc get around the problem of opening files in different formats and projections by doing approximate reprojection on the fly. For a lot of very good reasons, the GRASS developer community has repeatedly decided that this is not a good idea for GRASS because of its potential for geospatial error and for users to misunderstand the approximate nature of the automatic reprojection. So we are back to the database/location/mapset organization. Unless we make some fundamental changes in how GRASS works, users MUST open GRASS in a database/location/mapset. They MUST choose (or have chosen for them) a projection (location) and working directory (mapset). Making a default one for them (e.g., a latlon default) doesn’t help all that much it seems to me. Perhaps an alternative is to change the names somewhat so that users are informed about what is really needed to start GRASS. 1. pick a projection (not a location) 2. pick a working directory (not a mapset) To really implement this more easily, we might want to consider de-coupling these fundamentals (especially projection) from the file structure. In other words, we could get rid of “location” as a directory that has a PERMANENT mapset with files for projection and extent, and keep this information elsewhere. Then we could more easily have working directories (currently called mapsets) in any location on the computer. This could make it easier to get people started and still maintain the geospatial integrity that GRASS is known for. 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 22, 2015, at 8:27 AM, Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.commailto:kratocha...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.commailto:landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.commailto:markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
This thread has exposed a problem with GRASS GIS - lack of clear vision (target auditory, market niche). I agree with Anna - startup screen is a problem only on the first time and it goes away with training. We must keep in mind that GRASS is more often launched not for the first time than for the first time - make it easy for daily use not I am just astrosurfing use. If you have been trying AutoCAD, MicroStation, you would know - complex user interface, hard to run for the first time is not a problem - I see new GIS users using those two GIS programs every day and their count is not declining. Please, let's not try to compete with QGIS in ease of use, as we will lose due to lack of manpower and different goals (quality and power over ease of use). Spatial data is hard. High quality analysis is hard. Let's keep GRASS professional by providing easy way how to do it right (and not a easy way how to do it wrong). I would suggest to add a launch wizard that would take user through location - mapset etc. steps with nice explanations, etc. and nice chekcbox Do not show this wizard next time - thus first time runners would get their let me google this for you type hand holding, but it would be easy to keep powerful startup screen for daily use. Just 0.02 Māris. 2015-01-22 17:27 GMT+02:00 Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember correctly, I am not sure why not in home. What I struggle with when explaining students how to use GRASS is not really the welcome screen but reprojecting data. If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. This is a topic for a different thread, how exactly it should be implemented. No matter what we decide to do with the starting of grass, this should be implemented. Especially when user will start with empty location, they will want to import their data and then the reprojection is crucial. I saw a lot of cases when they just override the projection check to overcome the error they get and don't read. Any opinion on what can we do for this release? Anna -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Maris Nartiss maris@gmail.com wrote: This thread has exposed a problem with GRASS GIS - lack of clear vision (target auditory, market niche). Perhaps rather different visions... comes with being open source with an active and open community I agree with Anna - startup screen is a problem only on the first time and it goes away with training. We must keep in mind that GRASS is more often launched not for the first time than for the first time - make it easy for daily use not I am just astrosurfing use. +2.. really couldn't agree more If you have been trying AutoCAD, MicroStation, you would know - complex user interface, hard to run for the first time is not a problem - I see new GIS users using those two GIS programs every day and their count is not declining. Please, let's not try to compete with QGIS in ease of use, as we will lose due to lack of manpower and different goals (quality and power over ease of use). Spatial data is hard. High quality analysis is hard. Let's keep GRASS professional by providing easy way how to do it right (and not a easy way how to do it wrong). The easy way to do it right.. one of the important reasons I started to use GRASS and made me stick with it. I would suggest to add a launch wizard that would take user through location - mapset etc. steps with nice explanations, etc. and nice chekcbox Do not show this wizard next time - thus first time runners would get their let me google this for you type hand holding, but it would be easy to keep powerful startup screen for daily use. Just 0.02 Māris. 2015-01-22 17:27 GMT+02:00 Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember correctly, I am not sure why not in home. What I struggle with when explaining students how to use GRASS is not really the welcome screen but reprojecting data. If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. This is a topic for a different thread, how exactly it should be implemented. No matter what we decide to do with the starting of grass, this should be implemented. Especially when user will start with empty location, they will want to import their data and then the reprojection is crucial. I saw a lot of cases when they just override the projection check to overcome the error they get and don't read. Any opinion on what can we do for this release? Anna -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Maris Nartiss maris@gmail.com wrote: This thread has exposed a problem with GRASS GIS - lack of clear vision (target auditory, market niche). Perhaps rather different visions... comes with being open source with an active and open community I agree with Anna - startup screen is a problem only on the first time and it goes away with training. We must keep in mind that GRASS is more often launched not for the first time than for the first time - make it easy for daily use not I am just astrosurfing use. +2.. really couldn't agree more If you have been trying AutoCAD, MicroStation, you would know - complex user interface, hard to run for the first time is not a problem - I see new GIS users using those two GIS programs every day and their count is not declining. Please, let's not try to compete with QGIS in ease of use, as we will lose due to lack of manpower and different goals (quality and power over ease of use). Spatial data is hard. High quality analysis is hard. Let's keep GRASS professional by providing easy way how to do it right (and not a easy way how to do it wrong). The easy way to do it right.. one of the important reasons I started to use GRASS and made me stick with it. I would suggest to add a launch wizard that would take user through location - mapset etc. steps with nice explanations, etc. and nice chekcbox Do not show this wizard next time - thus first time runners would get their let me google this for you type hand holding, but it would be easy to keep powerful startup screen for daily use. Just 0.02 Māris. 2015-01-22 17:27 GMT+02:00 Anna Petrášová kratocha...@gmail.com: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Martin Landa landa.mar...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2015-01-22 9:48 GMT+01:00 Markus Metz markus.metz.gisw...@gmail.com: A suggestion for a compromise: Have a minimal welcome screen that says something like Starting GRASS GIS in location X, mapset Y nothing else, no list of all the available locations and mapsets Only two buttons: OK, Change Make OK the default, Change will bring up the current welcome screen. The user has then just to hit enter and GRASS is running. This would reduce the (confusing) amount of information on the current welcome screen. It would also give more space for a little graphic ;-) Location and mapset can be taken from GISRC, if that does not exist, create a new GISDBASE in the user's home, put the demolocation in it and use this (I think the wingrass installer is already doing that). it make sense to me, I really like this idea. Martin I am not particularly fond of this idea, I change location and mapset quite often, so this is additional step. I agree GISDBASE and the demolocation should be already there during the first start. Then the user can just hits Start GRASS on the current welcome dialog and there is no need for the minimal welcome screen. It works like this for Windows already. It creates grassdata in My Documents if I remember correctly, I am not sure why not in home. What I struggle with when explaining students how to use GRASS is not really the welcome screen but reprojecting data. If we would find a way to automatically reproject data during import, that would save a lot of work and explanation and it's useful not just for beginners. This is a topic for a different thread, how exactly it should be implemented. No matter what we decide to do with the starting of grass, this should be implemented. Especially when user will start with empty location, they will want to import their data and then the reprojection is crucial. I saw a lot of cases when they just override the projection check to overcome the error they get and don't read. Any opinion on what can we do for this release? Anna -- Martin Landa http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/Landa http://gismentors.eu/mentors/landa ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
Re: [GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Jan 22, 2015, at 11:11 PM, Yann Chemin yche...@gmail.commailto:yche...@gmail.com wrote: Hi MIchael, Are we going to yet another branch from the original topic :-) Just clarifying what I said earlier on this particular topic. Why making the start of GRASS easier is not easy. I believe the fundamental change you speak about is worth discussing for GRASS 8. Maybe. But certainly not for this release I also believe that the on-the-fly reprojection on import is a feature we all agree is (very) needed (GRASS 8). Good reasons have been discussed for not doing this, although others would like it. But again, not for this release Finally, I believe that Vaclav small changes to the welcome page are worth agreeing upon. Yep. And the ORIGINAL topic of a nicer splash screen. Michael On 23 January 2015 at 10:23, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edumailto:michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: Hi Vaclav, To be clear, I agree with you that GRASS should not start with a wizard and had did not intend anyone to think that. The ‘step 1, step 2, step 3’ was simply to put this as text on the startup dialog, to help users know which step to do in what order. The more radical suggestion that I made today involves fundamental change of how GRASS works. Change the file structure to GISDBASE/mapsets=working directories and get rid of locations as folders. Store projection information in a different way than as locations. Maybe store projection info in each mapset, or maybe some other way. Maybe each mapset still only contains maps from a single projection to keep maps of the same projection together. It may be necessary to do other things to make sure that users don’t try to combine maps of different projections. This would make it possible to have a simpler startup. But it would take more thought and some programming to make it work. 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: 480-965-6262tel:480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130tel:480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC) fax: 480-965-7671tel:480-965-7671 (SHESC), 480-727-0709tel:480-727-0709 (CSDC) www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton, http://csdc.asu.eduhttp://csdc.asu.edu/ On Jan 22, 2015, at 8:22 PM, Vaclav Petras wenzesl...@gmail.commailto:wenzesl...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Michael Barton michael.bar...@asu.edumailto:michael.bar...@asu.edu wrote: For this release, we need to focus on just tweaking the current startup screen and doing better graphics for the splash. The other topic is a much bigger issue. Not everybody considers my suggestion as useful-enough change and there is the hard freeze (although the functionality changes are almost zero). As a result, I don't plan to commit it to release branch now. However, I consider it as a great improvement which I definitively want to use and I think it is very beneficial for beginners, so I will commit that to trunk when I get to it. Then we can continue in the other improvements. To the other things. I also consider data in different projections as much bigger issue. GRASS has all the tools as described and also implemented by Markus Metz but it is too much for beginners. We should definitively make it more accessible (but it is also interesting business opportunity :-). I still don't understand what the user could in the dummy/LL/XY/demo location besides looking to menus and being confused from wrongly imported data or no imported data at all because of projection issues. Michael suggests to replace startup by some wizard and this is what QGIS is doing. So, is putting everything to wizard better then the window + optional wizard? We can go that way but note the difference between QGIS and GRASS, when QGIS is running the wizard, the app is already there, wizard is just an additional window. For GRASS, it would the window you get which might be strange. Even stranger if the window would be just some small one with Will start in location xxx and Change and Continue buttons. It would be also useful to analyze why the thing which is done on MS Windows by the standalone installer is not enough. There should be a demo location already and set as last used. Also NC SPM can be downloaded, should it be checked by default? Does somebody has a opinion on using Location, GRASS Location, or GRASS location consistently? You can see also LOCATION here and there in GRASS but I wouldn't go that way. ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev -- ___ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
[GRASS-dev] Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:55 PM, 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 think that you have to go all the work anyway and the dummy location is there just to show that it is possible. There are some potential problems, for example how it works now with the .bash_history file? 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. And what will you do after 'just starting'? Do you have your data as LL? Or will you use -o flag to ignore the projection check? 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. This is a good point. I can see that. However, manual is also useful for this. This is what I use. Works for command line programs too. 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. Vaclav 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
