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Making start of GRASS GIS easier for newcomers On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:40 AM, Markus Metz <[email protected]> wrote: > [moving to a new thread] > > > On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 10:55 PM, Markus Neteler <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Moritz Lennert >> <[email protected]> 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 find the fact that GRASS does not provide a default >>> projection system, but forces the user to think about projection from the >>> start, one of its strengths, both for work and for teaching. >> >> On of it strenghts, yes. But I have been teaching GRASS a lot to GIS >> professionals who got trained on different systems. And many asked >> "why this screen? why cannot you just start like the other GIS"? And I >> tend to agree (again: optionally). The point is that we, on the >> contrary to many other GIS, still have all the control mechanisms in >> place which avoid that the user mixes projections. So that's all fine. >> >> Also in Portland at the FOSS4G conf (where I showcased GRASS GIS 7) >> people suggested to let 'em get into the system right away. They >> explained to me that a newcomer wants to see the menu to understand >> how powerful the system is. But they would get stuck at the welcome >> screen... Yes, and they don't want to think before they open the >> program but "just try", out of curiosity. > > 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 [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
