Talk:GRASS SoC Ideas 2008

Okay, making a raw dump of ideas here, so that we can more easily keep track of them.

Displaced symbols

• Create a module to place map symbols on a map, so that the feature and other overlap information is minimized (NP-Complete problem). The map symbol should be referenced to their original location, by using a reference line.
  • Create new symbol file and add support for it to the GUI and a d.icon command, and to the PS driver.
  • Support native GRASS symbols, png, svg and others. Support specifying symbol in the database for each feature.

Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

--HB: see comments posted to the mailing list

Uniforming the vector modules

• Vector 3D support. Make all vector modules work in 3D space.
• Add where= and cats= to as many modules as possible, where reasonable (also see ml discussion on this)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

Line of sight

• Improved line of sight (Paul Kelly's proposal from last year)
• 3D Vector line of sight (related): line of sight in 3D vector city models etc
• See GRASS SoC Ideas 2007

wxGui

• Graphical colour and interval and category selections. This would create a file which could be used in r.reclass, r.colors and friends. Maybe a similar tool for the vector equivalent?
• create an SQL query builder tool to help build sql queries, if enough time add PostGIS queries [cooperation with PostGIS]
• I've heard many complaints about GRASS lacking a Kriging module. One of these ideas could fix that (maybe both)
  • gstat GUI (would create gstat files, run gstat, and provide a GUI for all file editing tasks)
  • The same except would create an R script.

Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

Are these projects large enough to be their own individual SoC projects or should they maybe be one?

Raster

• GDAL based live-linking of raster maps to avoid import: r.external (from last year) via GDAL

• raster db connections. The raster category value would be a cat in a database. Introduce maybe a new kind of map otherwise identical to an INT map, but the values should be treated as DB cat id's.
  • is this at all feasible?
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

Vector

• Implement new TIN algorithms from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jrs/jrspapers.html#dtstreamn and Digital elevation model construction from structured topographic data: The DEST algorithm (see list discussion)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

• Expand v.generalize with new methods (e.g merging, exaggeration, collapse, displacement, point aggregation)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

• rewrite v.buffer / v.parallel (maybe need to remap the GRASS map in another datastructure, like winged edge)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

• reimplement v.delauny (also possibly by going via some other data structure)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

Statistics

• R integration [there was some talk on this on the list]

• v.out.odg To create OO draw files (we could maybe collaborate with OO.o on this one, e.g. one mentor form each organisation)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

Ideas by Moriz Lennert

Implement file based spatial index

• (see "Keep topology and spatial index in file instead of in memory" in Radim's Vector ToDo http://freegis.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/grass6/doc/vector/TODO?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup)
• extend v.overlay to allow all types of overlay operations for all types of vector (i.e. also points and lines)
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>

More ambitious

• implement an equivalent of eCognition's object-based classification (in contrast to pixel-based classification)

Ideas by Helena Mitasova

• Getting a start for the next generation visualization tool for GRASS - just a simple demo that can be done in 3 months to display surface(s) in 2D and smoothly transfer the view into 3D. GUI needs to be consistent with the new wxPython GUI for GRASS. Do we have a potential mentor? (I can be the second mentor, but we would need somebody to mentor the programming part).

Ideas by Michael Barton

• v.what to take xy coordinates (single xy or line of xy's with a buffer distance to find stuff within that buffer distance of the coordinates; set of at least 3 xy's to ID a polygon and find the stuff within it).
  • Willing to Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim <wolf+grass@bergenheim.net>