Hi Dylan, A big part of where we are at the moment is creating the same functionality we now have in TclTk, but in a more advanced GUI platform that will be native on different OS's.
A couple things to note about the whole process. We first worked out a design plan for a new GUI (about a year and a half ago). To make this work, it was apparent that there needed to be some changes in existing d.* modules and some new display management tools created. To jump start this, I redid the TclTk GUI to conform to the new design specs. This offered a further incentive to revamp some of the display code. Glynn did a lot of this. As this was going on, we reviewed GUI platforms and decided to try wxPython. So, at one level, we're trying now to implement the design specs in wxPython. At the same time, we're trying to improve on how we do this and make it easier to build on this design plan to add new functionality. Some of the new functionality is already showing up. Here is a brief rundown. Nicer autogenerated properties dialogs for all GRASS commands. More GUI controls like color pickers. The help manual is available from one of the tabs in the dialog. Display command properties are set from the same dialogs you get when you call the display command from the commandline. We're trying to avoid having to maintain separate, custom panels for display objects (raster maps, vector maps, grids, etc) in the GIS Manager. This is working pretty well so far. Better control of overlay features like scalebars, legends, and text. These can be placed easily with a mouse and their properties altered by double clicking on the overlay. More save options and much nicer printing. I think that map rendering is faster (but haven't clocked it) Built in attribute management and query tool in the form of a nice table manager. The sql query tools are still under development. The ability to easily set the default display font--especially to a nice TrueType font. This has been made even nicer because enhancements to the PNG display driver (used for both TclTk and wxPython GRASS) render these fonts very well. I backported this to the TclTk GUI. A comprehensive location setting wizard. This is still under development, but will combine all means of creating new locations into a single unified interface. An even more powerful profiling tool, that is still being enhanced (a lot of enhancements added just a couple days ago). Currently, it will allow you to profile up to 3 different maps in the same display and gives you a lot of customization options for how the profile looks (e.g., line color, thickness, style, legend, title and axis labels, etc) and is scaled (custom ranges, log scale, etc.). We are also making it possible to run display commands from the command line and have their output show up in the wxPython map display canvas. The GUI has a cleaner, more up-to-date look, is more compact, and (hopefully) easier to navigate. For example, Each display open has a tab in the GIS Manager. Click on the tab to show the layer tree for that display and activate the display--or click on the display to do the same thing. There is a new commands toolbox in the works that will give fast access to at least some of the commands. And of course, implementing this will make Python (or at least a run-time version) a dependency of GRASS. This means that Python scripting will be available to anyone using GRASS. This should open up a lot of new possibilities. I hope that this helps. I've avoided the guts of coding all this. But once you get over the hump of object-oriented programming, there are some real advantages to working with wxPython/Python to tie together GRASS commands in a comprehensive GUI. Maybe one of the other folks on the GUI team will want to add to this. Cheers Michael On 5/28/07 8:54 AM, "Dylan Beaudette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I am working on some text about grass and need some background > information on the wxGRASS GUI. I have some details gleaned from the > mailing list. However, if you have a couple points or ideas which you > think are worth highlighting please send me a message. Namely I am > looking for some of the advances that have been made since the TclTk > GUI days. > > cheers, > > Dylan __________________________________________ Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology School of Human Evolution & Social Change Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity Arizona State University phone: 480-965-6213 fax: 480-965-7671 www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton _______________________________________________ grassuser mailing list [email protected] http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser
