Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-26 Thread Hamish
Helena wrote:
 thanks for pointing it out - there was a lot of stuff that I
 did not know  was there, it should be cleaned up now, please
 let me know if you still find something or if there are any
 problems.
...
 http://courses.ncsu.edu/mea792/common/media/gisdemo.zip

ok, thanks. should we copy that into
   http://grass.osgeo.org/sampledata/north_carolina/

as .tar.gz too?  keeping the same filename?


 Also, I can export the data into some external formats -
 perhaps shape files and geotiff? in case somebody would
 like to use it with other software.

We are already doing that for NC shape, rast_geotiff, and kml
tarballs at the above sampledata/ URL. The cloning of the data
was one reason I felt pretty shaky about shipping the full NC
grass Location in addition to the shp/gtiff files.

Also along with selected Natural Earth data layers, an
OpenStreetMap data extract, and links to a bunch of other
random shapefiles and geotiffs that other projects supply
as part of their quickstart docs, all in a ~/data/ directory.
Finally, there's an icon on the Desktop which leads to a OSGeo
website listing links to geodata  courseware downloads needed
for various workshops and tutorials that were too big to fit on
the disc or not ready at the time the discs went to press.


Hamish
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-26 Thread Hamish
Markus N wrote:
 Examples *must* work out of the box from my point of view.

(they do, afaik)

 Also, there is not much advertisement coming from an
 outdated dataset of the '80th (Spearfish) while having for
 many years a way more recent data set available, published,
 and meanwhile used in most GRASS manual pages.

due to the tight space limitations it was the only one that was
safe not to be cut. with the nc_basic one it's better now, but
I've only had that in place since yesterday.

does geodata age? in defense of the Spearfish dataset, it is
both small and comprehensive, even if it doesn't show off modern
geo-layers as much and is a bit crusty. but point taken.


Hamish
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-25 Thread Markus Metz
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 5:59 AM, Hamish hamis...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Markus Metz wrote:
 An example for vector processing using the basins raster
 created in the previous step:

 1) convert the basins to vector areas with r.to.vect -v feature=area
 2) load average elevation for each basin to the attribute table with
 v.rast.stats
 3) assign the color table of the raster elevation using average
 elevation values to the basins vector with v.colors column=elev_mean
 raster=elevation.10m
 4) display the vector using the colors in GRASSRGB

 thanks, that leads through nicely. Now added, with some short notes
 about the attribute table manager, cartographic composer, and graphical
 modeler under other things to try.

 http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/Quick_wxGUI_tutorial#Vector_modules
 http://adhoc.osgeo.osuosl.org/livedvd/docs/en/quickstart/grass_quickstart.html

 BTW, there is no raster map named 'elevation' in the spearfish
 dataset, but e.g. 'elevation.10m' as seen in one of the screenshots in
 the quickstart. This should be corrected throughout the quickstart.

 I know, I was trying to make the instructions generic enough to work
 with either of the two datasets. I figured those using Spearfish would
 see the .dem and .10m and figure out that they should pick one, but
 those running in NC would be hunting around for an exact name which
 didn't exist.

So it is better to use the spearfish location but a raster name from
the NC dataset and let users hunt around for an exact name that does
not exist? Sorry for the provocation, but that is the status quo.
IMHO, if there are screenshots in the quickstart, the instructions
should be such that the screenshots can be reproduced, otherwise users
might be confused that their results do not look like the provided
screenshots (easy reproducibility of results is not such a bad idea).

You could add a short half-sentence to the very first paragraph, e.g.
... some slight adjustments may be needed for the NC dataset, e.g. by
using elevation@PERMANENT instead of elevation.10m@PERMANENT.


 It seems that the basins in 'Watersheds and streams' were
 created with the minimum size of the exterior watershed basin threshold
 set to 10 cells, not 1 cells (missed a zero).

 It's not a typo, I just ran it for elevation.dem not elevation.10m. Using
 elevation.10m with a threshold of 1 cells doesn't match the screenshot
 but is not so bad, so just try to pick something in the middle and stay
 loose.

If the quickstart is supposed to target beginners, it would IMHO be
better to have matching examples and screenshots to avoid confusion.

Markus
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-25 Thread Hamish
Hamish:
  I know, I was trying to make the instructions generic enough to work
  with either of the two datasets. I figured those using Spearfish would
  see the .dem and .10m and figure out that they should pick one, but
  those running in NC would be hunting around for an exact name which
  didn't exist.

MarkusM:
 So it is better to use the spearfish location but a raster name from
 the NC dataset and let users hunt around for an exact name that does
 not exist?

Yes! I'd like to encourage a little exploring and making the student
think instead of exactly telling every move to make click by click. But
no so abstract that they get lost. If you are told to pick the elevation
map but are only presented with elevation.dem and elevation.10m, both
of which work fine, I'd argue that it's healthy to make them make a
personal choice, they get more personal reward from it that way (sort
of like telling them to select their home-town from a global dataset).
[ok, I'm reaching out on the limb :)]


 Sorry for the provocation, but that is the status quo.

No need to apologize, we get a better end result from frank but courteous
discussion.

I do take your point, and I've now reworded it slightly to give the
exact map names at the start and make it more like click on your elevation
map instead of click on the `elevation` map.


 IMHO, if there are screenshots in the quickstart, the instructions
 should be such that the screenshots can be reproduced, otherwise users
 might be confused that their results do not look like the provided
 screenshots (easy reproducibility of results is not such a bad idea).

it is positive feedback indeed, and that's critical (especially in the
first 5 minutes of the tutorial when they are very unsure of what they're
doing), but again I wouldn't mind a little deviations and choose your
own adventure to it. (both ways visually look fine, and fwiw I'd say the
smaller threshold size has a better looking v.colors result)
Or you can read that as the payoff:effort ratio for me to cut a new
screenshot has not yet exceeded 1.0.

I'm much more concerned about the time they'll spend in the menus and
tabs trying to find first the r.watershed module and then the threshold
option. I know it well and where it is, and still I have to hunt for it.
Lots of screenshots with menu entries circled in red with arrows and things
would be great (Markus N did one like that for the startup screen help
page), but is beyond the scope of this quickstart which is already a bit
on the large side for what it's supposed to be.


 You could add a short half-sentence to the very first
 paragraph, e.g. ... some slight adjustments may be needed for the NC
 dataset, e.g. by using elevation@PERMANENT instead of
 elevation.10m@PERMANENT.

Done, but I left off the @PERMANENT part, those are the only maps to
choose from at that point so you can't go wrong  it just clutters the
text.


cheers,
Hamish
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-25 Thread Markus Neteler
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Hamish hamis...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Hamish:
  I know, I was trying to make the instructions generic enough to work
  with either of the two datasets. I figured those using Spearfish would
  see the .dem and .10m and figure out that they should pick one, but
  those running in NC would be hunting around for an exact name which
  didn't exist.

 MarkusM:
 So it is better to use the spearfish location but a raster name from
 the NC dataset and let users hunt around for an exact name that does
 not exist?

 Yes! I'd like to encourage a little exploring and making the student
 think instead of exactly telling every move to make click by click. But
 no so abstract that they get lost.

... well, with the today's click-and-try mentality this means: click-and-throw.

Examples *must* work out of the box from my point of view.
Also, there is not much advertisement coming from an outdated dataset
of the '80th (Spearfish) while having for many years a way more
recent data set available, published, and meanwhile used in most
GRASS manual pages.

...
 No need to apologize, we get a better end result from frank but courteous
 discussion.

Yes: so please let's forget about the Spearfish data set.

My 0.02 cent,
markusN
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-25 Thread Helena Mitasova

 
 ok, done.
 
 I note some left over Mac ._files and some empty .tmp/ cruft, and also
 the SEARCH_PATH in user1 lists some mapsets not shipped with the smaller
 dataset. harmless, but..
 
Hamish - thanks for pointing it out - I will fix it and post a new one ASAP, 
Helena
 
 thanks,
 Hamish
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-25 Thread Helena Mitasova
Hamish,

thanks for pointing it out - there was a lot of stuff that I did not know  was 
there, 
it should be cleaned up now, please let me know if you still find something 
or if there are any problems. Also, I can export the data into some external 
formats - perhaps shape files 
and geotiff? in case somebody would like to use it with other software.

http://courses.ncsu.edu/mea792/common/media/gisdemo.zip

Helena 

On Jul 25, 2012, at 1:20 AM, Hamish wrote:

 Hamish:
 Due to severe space limitations on the disc I'm continually concerned
 about having to remove the NC dataset, or cut it down to Helena's 40mb
 set.
 
 Helena:
 Hamish - I highly recommend to use this smaller dat set - it
 is much easier for users to understand (as I tried to avoid various
 obscure names there) and you can still do a lot with it and the simple
 names also allow for more generic quickstart docs (e.g. if somebody wants
 to use elevation or streams in other countries)
 I started to use it as a baseline data set and then expand
 it with various specialized mapsets for more advanced courses.
 here it is again (it should be the same as on the grass website)
 http://courses.ncsu.edu/mea792/common/Assign_GISamodel/Assignall.html
 
 ok, done.
 
 I note some left over Mac ._files and some empty .tmp/ cruft, and also
 the SEARCH_PATH in user1 lists some mapsets not shipped with the smaller
 dataset. harmless, but..
 
 
 thanks,
 Hamish
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-24 Thread Markus Metz
On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 2:32 AM, Hamish hamis...@yahoo.com wrote:

 There's a copy of the quickstart in the GRASS wiki. Note that
 when I wrote it there was a GRASS workshop at the targeted FOSS4G
 conference which was going to focus on vector processing, so I
 didn't bother to put much of that in the quickstart. Contributions
 demonstrating some fancy vector usage that makes GRASS special,
 or a common vector task to show how GRASS does it easily, would
 be appreciated. Just note that the quickstarts are intended to be
 quick- i.e. 5-10 minutes worth, so we've got to keep it concise.

An example for vector processing using the basins raster created in
the previous step:

1) convert the basins to vector areas with r.to.vect -v feature=area
2) load average elevation for each basin to the attribute table with
v.rast.stats
3) assign the color table of the raster elevation using average
elevation values to the basins vector with v.colors column=elev_mean
raster=elevation.10m
4) display the vector using the colors in GRASSRGB

BTW, there is no raster map named 'elevation' in the spearfish
dataset, but e.g. 'elevation.10m' as seen in one of the screenshots in
the quickstart. This should be corrected throughout the quickstart.
It seems that the basins in 'Watersheds and streams' were created with
the minimum size of the exterior watershed basin threshold set to
10 cells, not 1 cells (missed a zero).


 In addition, on the disc the QGIS-GRASS bridge is broken because
 of this bug:
   http://hub.qgis.org/issues/2947
   https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/868

The live dvd could use sextante for QGIS to access GRASS
functionality. An added bonus would be that sextante has bindings to
several GIS engines, one of them being GRASS, but others should also
be already available on the live dvd.

Markus M
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-24 Thread Hamish
Markus Metz wrote:
 An example for vector processing using the basins raster
 created in the previous step:
 
 1) convert the basins to vector areas with r.to.vect -v feature=area
 2) load average elevation for each basin to the attribute table with
 v.rast.stats
 3) assign the color table of the raster elevation using average
 elevation values to the basins vector with v.colors column=elev_mean
 raster=elevation.10m
 4) display the vector using the colors in GRASSRGB

thanks, that leads through nicely. Now added, with some short notes
about the attribute table manager, cartographic composer, and graphical
modeler under other things to try.

http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/Quick_wxGUI_tutorial#Vector_modules
http://adhoc.osgeo.osuosl.org/livedvd/docs/en/quickstart/grass_quickstart.html

 BTW, there is no raster map named 'elevation' in the spearfish
 dataset, but e.g. 'elevation.10m' as seen in one of the screenshots in
 the quickstart. This should be corrected throughout the quickstart.

I know, I was trying to make the instructions generic enough to work
with either of the two datasets. I figured those using Spearfish would
see the .dem and .10m and figure out that they should pick one, but
those running in NC would be hunting around for an exact name which
didn't exist.

Due to severe space limitations on the disc I'm continually concerned
about having to remove the NC dataset, or cut it down to Helena's 40mb
set. We already ship geotiffs and shapefiles of the same maps as part of
the OSGeo Educational dataset for use by all of the 40 or so projects
contributing to the disc  their workshops, tutorials, etc. If the
instructions are vague enough the quickstart docs might survive an
upheaval in the available data. :)

 It seems that the basins in 'Watersheds and streams' were
 created with the minimum size of the exterior watershed basin threshold
 set to 10 cells, not 1 cells (missed a zero).

It's not a typo, I just ran it for elevation.dem not elevation.10m. Using
elevation.10m with a threshold of 1 cells doesn't match the screenshot
but is not so bad, so just try to pick something in the middle and stay
loose.

  In addition, on the disc the QGIS-GRASS bridge is broken because
  of this bug:
http://hub.qgis.org/issues/2947
https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/868
 
 The live dvd could use sextante for QGIS to access GRASS functionality.
 An added bonus would be that sextante has bindings to several GIS
 engines, one of them being GRASS, but others should also be already
 available on the live dvd.

I believe Alex is working on that right now. Ideally we'll have lots of
ways to flow between GRASS and QGIS and R and PostGIS all setup and
working. helpers  testers are most welcome! IRC: #osgeolive on Freenode
or the live-demo@o.o mailing list.


Hamish
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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-24 Thread Helena Mitasova

 
 Due to severe space limitations on the disc I'm continually concerned
 about having to remove the NC dataset, or cut it down to Helena's 40mb
 set.

Hamish - I highly recommend to use this smaller dat set - it is much easier for 
users
to understand (as I tried to avoid various obscure names there)
and you can still do a lot with it and the simple names also allow for more 
generic 
quickstart docs (e.g. if somebody wants to use elevation or streams in other 
countries)
I started to use it as a baseline data set and then expand it with various 
specialized mapsets
for more advanced courses.
here it is again (it should be the same as on the grass website)
http://courses.ncsu.edu/mea792/common/Assign_GISamodel/Assignall.html

Helena


 

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Re: [GRASS-dev] [GRASS-user] please help review osgeo live dvd summary docs

2012-07-24 Thread Hamish
Hamish:
  Due to severe space limitations on the disc I'm continually concerned
  about having to remove the NC dataset, or cut it down to Helena's 40mb
  set.

Helena:
 Hamish - I highly recommend to use this smaller dat set - it
 is much easier for users to understand (as I tried to avoid various
 obscure names there) and you can still do a lot with it and the simple
 names also allow for more generic quickstart docs (e.g. if somebody wants
 to use elevation or streams in other countries)
 I started to use it as a baseline data set and then expand
 it with various specialized mapsets for more advanced courses.
 here it is again (it should be the same as on the grass website)
 http://courses.ncsu.edu/mea792/common/Assign_GISamodel/Assignall.html

ok, done.

I note some left over Mac ._files and some empty .tmp/ cruft, and also
the SEARCH_PATH in user1 lists some mapsets not shipped with the smaller
dataset. harmless, but..


thanks,
Hamish
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