Re: [udig-devel] Back in black

[Craig Taverner <udig@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ugo,

Is the jgrass console a groovy one? I had a look at the groovy console in udig, and it is a lot of fun! There is (was?) a couple of broken things, but I got it running enough to start learning and using it for small things (basically for trying out this and that before I code it in Java).
I'd really appreciate if it were included as a view (why not make this and other consoles integral part udig). (I do know people who don't develop, but are such power users that they'd be happy to have access to udig data - features, geometries, etc. - through a console interface.)

I can't speak for the JGrass console, but the one I did is a JRuby console with support for plugging in a startup script to enable a DSL. Right now all it does is create a few useful utility methods like 'maps', 'layers' and 'features' for easy access to the data model. But these are just wrappers on slightly longer syntax, just so you don't have to remember the complete data tree structure. You can still do everything the hard way (or 'proper way' perhaps :-). Since it is IRB, it is very interactive and easy to explore the data model. You still have to keep in mind that on the Java side of things there are class castings and IAdaptable things going on, but all in all JRuby gives a nice syntax for working with that.

I gave a small writeup on it at http://udig.refractions.net/confluence/display/HACK/JRuby+Console

It would be relatively easy to add to uDIG. In fact it's already separated it into a base part that could be added to any RCP app, and a product specific part (which is currently only a uDIG specific part). Only the branding is non-uDIG.

If there is increasing interest in this, I could try 'release' it for public use in uDIG. Currently it is only tested against uDIG 1.1, but I think there should be little, if any, changes to get it working on uDIG 1.2.

Cheers, Craig
(AmanziCat on #udig)