wxGUI.psmap(1)

💖 wxGUI Cartographic Composer 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the wxGUI Cartographic Composer page from the GRASS GIS User's Manual — yes, wxGUI.psmap(1), she's a whole icon, come sit with me 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so the wxGUI Cartographic Composer — also known as wx.psmap — is a wxGUI extension that lets you make hardcopy map outputs interactively, like literally building your own gorgeous printed map with your hands. 🎀

how it works: this tool generates a ps.map configuration file and then runs ps.map to create the PostScript output. no cap.

there are two modes, bestie:

• Draft mode — for map composing
• Preview mode — requires Python Imaging Library, so you can see how the result will look like 👀

in draft mode, map features (like legend or scalebar) are represented by a colored rectangle with a label. lowkey iconic, honestly.

Possible output files:

• ps.map instructions file
• PostScript/EPS file
• PDF (using ps2pdf)

Cartographic Composer enables to load in saved instructions file. Loading instruction files created by Cartographic Composer is more robust, as opposed to loading files created manually. (translation: trust the composer's own files, they just behave better 🫶)

Currently supported ps.map instructions:

• paper
• maploc
• scale
• border
• raster
• colortable
• vpoints
• vlines
• vareas
• vlegend
• text
• scalebar
• mapinfo
• point
• line
• rectangle
• labels

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🌈 CARTOGRAPHIC COMPOSER TOOLBAR 🌈

the way this toolbar has SO many buttons and every single one of them is doing something. let's go one by one, bestie, no skipping 🧚

• Generate instructions file — Generates and saves text file with mapping instructions. 📝
• Load instructions file — Load text file with mapping instructions.
• Page setup — Specify paper size, margins and orientation. 🗒️
• Pointer — Select object on the paper by clicking, drag the cursor while pressing the left mouse button to move it or resize object (currently only map frame) by clicking on a small black box in its bottom right corner. Double click to show object properties dialog.
• Pan — Drag the pan cursor while pressing the left mouse button to move your view. 🖐️
• Zoom in — Interactive zooming with the mouse in both draft and preview mode. Drawing a box or just a left click with the mouse and zoom-in cursor causes the display to zoom in so that the area defined by the box fills the display.
• Zoom out — Interactive zooming with the mouse in both draft and preview mode. Drawing a box or just a left click with the mouse and zoom-out cursor causes the display to zoom out so that the area displayed shrinks to fill the area defined by the box.
• Zoom to page — Zoom to display the entire page.
• Map frame — Click and drag to place map frame. If map frame is already drawn, open a dialog to set its properties. 🖼️
• Raster map — Shows a dialog to add or change the raster map.
• Vector map — Shows a dialog to add or change current vector maps and their properties:
  • Data selection — Select data to draw:
  • Feature type — Select which data type to draw. In case of point data, points or centroids can be drawn, in case of line data, lines or boundaries.
  • Layer selection — Select layer and limit data by a SQL query or chose only certain categories.
  • Mask — Whether to use mask or not.
  • Colors — Color settings:
  • Outline — Select outline color and width in points. In case of lines, outline means highlighting.
  • Fill — Select fill color, one color for all vector elements or color from rgb column. 🎨
  • Size and style — Sets size, style, symbols, pattern; depends on data type:
  • Symbology — Available for point data. Choose symbol or EPS file to draw points with.
  • Line style — Available for line data. Select line style (solid, dashed, ...) and the look of the ends of the line (butt, round, ...)
  • Pattern — Available for areas. Choose pattern file and set the width of the pattern.
  • Size — Available for point data. Choose size (number of times larger than the size in the icon file) as a single value or take the size from a map table column.
  • Rotation — Available for point data. Rotate symbols counterclockwise with the given value or with the value from a map table column.
  • Width — Available for line data. Set line width in points or take the value from a map table column.
• Add overlays — Add overlays: vector labels, grid (not yet implemented). ⚠️
  • Add labels — Add vector labels created beforehand by v.label module.
• Add map elements — Add map elements: legend, scalebar, map info, text.
  • Add legend — Add raster or vector legend or edit their properties.
  • Add map info — Add information about region, grid and scale or edit map info properties.
  • Add scalebar — Add scalebar or edit its properties.
  • Add text — Add text label.
• Remove selected element — Select an object and remove it. Pressing Delete key does the same. 💀
• Show preview — Generates output and switches to Preview mode to see the result. Be patient, it can take a while. (fr fr, she's thinking, give her a sec 😭)
• Generate hardcopy map output in PS — Generates hardcopy map output in PostScript/EPS file.
• Generate hardcopy map output in PDF — Generates hardcopy map output in PDF using ps2pdf or Ghostscript gswin32c/gswin64c (OS MS Windows platform only).

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🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• wxGUI, wxGUI components
• See also wiki page.

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Anna Kratochvilova, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic (bachelor's final project 2011, mentor: Martin Landa)

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📦 SOURCE CODE 📦

Available at: wxGUI Cartographic Composer source code (history)

Accessed: Saturday Jan 17 05:42:35 2026

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate it up 💅✨ sign-off time: this beauty is brought to you by the © 2003-2025 GRASS Development Team, straight out of the GRASS GIS 8.4.2 Reference Manual — and the page itself is filed under GRASS 8.4.2, wxGUI.psmap(1). mwah 🫶🌸