Blog

Here I post my thoughts, QGIS tips and tricks, updates on my QGIS-related work, etc.

April Fool's day

01.04.2009 09:10 ·  Notes  ·  qgis

I have never been a big fan of this “holiday”. As long as it is limited to innocent jokes, it is fine. But when people start doing all kinds of bad things and claim it’s a joke…

By the way, the QGIS developers celebrated today’s April Fool’s Day in a peculiar way by announcing that QGIS will become closed source, proprietary software. Humorists.

GIS Geoproject 5.27RC2

17.12.2008 16:12 ·  GIS  ·  geoproject, release

After a long delay of almost half a year, the second release candidate of GIS Geoproject 5.27 has been released. In addition, Eugene updated the site design and slightly revised the navigation (in particular, he removed references to the mysterious “Land Project”).

Among the changes, I would like to highlight the following:

The full list of changes can be found on the website. There are two versions available for download: the RC1 → RC2 update and the full installation package.

GIS Geoproject vs competitors

02.12.2008 12:17 ·  Notes  ·  geoproject

During my work in the field of cadastre I had the opportunity to use several different programs: Invent-Grad for DOS and Windows, Delta Digitals and GIS Geoproject 5.x. Some of them I used a lot, others less. I hope that my observations will help people make a choice.

All the following is based on my own personal experience and opinion — your mileage may vary.

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Made life easier

30.10.2008 12:20 ·  Notes  ·  work

Recently, I have often been asked to produce various reports using data from .in4 files (those who know will understand). The work has to be done for “yesterday”, while the number of files to be processed is counted in the hundreds and thousands.

I used to use GIS Geoproject 5.x to do this: import files and then use the “Semantic Registry” to create the table I needed. But the lack of a batch import of the exchange files in Geoproject makes the process a real torture: select a file, import it, transfer the information to the project, select the next file… At the same time, there is a risk of getting confused and processing the same file twice, or missing something. And there is a significant slowdown after the first hundred objects. It is uncomfortable, long, and monotonous.

Deciding to simplify and speed up this process, I started programming a few days ago. The first beta saw the light of day today and even worked as it should. The principle is simple: select files, extract the necessary information and write it into a text file with a delimiter. The resulting file opens perfectly in OOo Calc or MS Excel.

I did a small test: 2219 files (20 of them block files) were processed in about 7 seconds. Not bad.

Tables in GIS Geoproject report generator

01.10.2008 18:10 ·  GIS  ·  geoproject, howto

Probably everyone who has started to work with the Report Generator in GIS Geoproject has asked the question: “How can I insert a table in a template?” This question comes up again and again because tables are one of the main elements of various cadastral and geodetic documents (just think of coordinate lists, azimuth tables, and land explications).

At first glance, the lack of standard tools like in MS Word or OOo Writer makes this task impossible. But this is only at first sight. In reality, FastReport, and thus the Report Generator, are at least as good as text editors when it comes to creating tables.

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QGIS plugin hardships

09.09.2008 08:55 ·  Notes  ·  qgis, plugins

I have been struggling with development of the Python plugin for Quantum GIS for quite some time now… I’m adding new features to a polygon layer, but after addition they are not visible on a map and not listed in the layer’s attribute table. However, if I remove the layer from the project and then add it again — all new features are there.

Here is the code I use

geom = QgsGeometry.fromPolygon([lstCoords])
ft = QgsFeature()
ft.setGeometry(geom)
ft.addAttribute(0, QVariant("atribute 1"))
self.iface.getMapCanvas().setCurrentLayer(vLayer)
vLayer.startEditing()
if vLayer.addFeature(ft, True):
    vLayer.commitChanges()
self.iface.getMapCanvas().refresh()

What is the problem? Am I doing something wrong?…

PlaneView object in GIS Geoproject report generator

03.09.2008 19:54 ·  GIS  ·  geoproject, howto

One of the most commonly used primitives of the Geoproject 5.x GIS Report Generator is the Cadastral Plan component (PlaneView). Its short description can be found in the “Geoproject 5” GIS User Manual (chapter 11 Designer — Document Template Editor). Since this component is very powerful and most templates will need it, and since there is not much information in the manual, I think it is time to get to know it.

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Improving UX in GIS Geoproject

22.08.2008 12:18 ·  GIS  ·  geoproject, howto

GIS Geoproject is a very popular, convenient, and easy-to-use geographic information system. It is used by more than 350 organisations from different countries, and this number is still growing.

The reason for writing this post was the fact that many people use the system as it is after installation. There is nothing wrong with that — the default configuration of Geoproject is quite universal, and it can be used without changes to perform almost any task. It is possible to work this way, but in my opinion, it is not very comfortable. This post is dedicated to improving the user experience when working with GIS Geoproject.

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Beginning

20.08.2008 14:34 ·  Site  ·  blog

For a long time I have been thinking about the possibility of starting a blog. Many times I have been asking myself “For what?”, and then answering — for convenience. It is convenient to keep my thoughts, publish various ideas and share experience… And now, after a thorough and lengthy process of choosing a platform the blog has been created.

Here I will post about everything that is somehow related to my interests: programming, databases, opensource, GIS… Perhaps I also will go beyond these topics. Anyway, after a few posts it will be more clear how and where it goes.