Despite the fact that QGIS now has a built-in raster calculator, the RasterCalc plugin I developed is still quite popular. I don’t know how to explain it: either it’s a matter of habit, or my calculator is more convenient… I’d like to know what the reason is, maybe I should make a poll.
Why this preface? For a long time, I’ve been “terrorised” by requests to add support for conditional operators to my plugin. The one guy from Spain was particularly active. And no matter how often I pointed out that I was busy with other projects, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, nothing helped. After a short break, the “attacks” were repeated. Apparently, they had decided to wear me down.
The inclusion of a patch that added comparison operators (submitted by Ghislain Picard) didn’t help either. It was not enough, and it was not what they were looking for. People wanted more, something similar to r.mapcalc from GRASS and preferably with the same syntax.
Well… I have to admit, they got it. Today this most wanted feature is implemented. However, the syntax is different from r.mapcalc’s, because I didn’t want to make the already complex parsing code even more complicated. Now you can do things like:
compare pixel values with a constant and replace pixel values that meet the condition with another value
compare pixel values with corresponding pixels of another raster/band, and replace pixel values that match the condition with corresponding values from the third raster/band
other similar things
This nice feature is still in my local repository. I will not commit it to the public repository until the documentation has been updated. And I really don’t have the mood or energy to do that. I don’t like writing, whether it’s an essay, an article, or anything else. There are times when it is easy to write, but those are rare.
There is another reason or two, to be precise and honest. Firstly, I’m thinking about optimising the plugin a bit: operations on large rasters use a lot of CPU and memory. And secondly, that very active Spaniard made another feature request the other day, and I have a feeling that he will be as persistent in his efforts to get me to implement it as he was before.
But I haven’t made a final decision yet. Maybe the conditional operator should be enough for a new version and I should not bother with refactoring and optimisation? Or should I wait a bit, but release an even more powerful calculator and consolidate the success of the first versions?
Alessandro Furieri has announced the SpatiaLite Cookbook, an excellent guide to SpatiaLite with many practical examples, optimisation tips and information on using SpatiaLite with different programming languages. You can check it out here.
Frank Warmerdam has announced that OSGeo4W is moving to the recently released GDAL 1.8.0. Instead of GDAL 1.5.4, the default version will be 1.8.0, additional packages like gdal-python, gdal-autotest, gdal-ecw etc. will also be updated or removed if no longer needed.
For compatibility with some packages that still require GDAL 1.5.4, a new package gdal15dll (with the necessary libraries) will be added. This package will be automatically installed if needed.
Since the transition to a new version of GDAL is a rather laborious and time-consuming process, the update of some packages included in OSGeo4W is temporarily suspended. In particular, this affects QGIS nightly builds.
The maintainers of the QGIS OSGeo4W package have already announced that they will rebuild the package with GDAL 1.8.0 as soon as possible, GRASS will be rebuilt after GRASS 6.4.1 is released.
Nathan has published an interesting video showing 8 years of QGIS development.
The video was created using Gource, detailed explanations of the process can be found on Nathan’s blog. Each cluster of files represents a directory, and branches show the directory hierarchy of the source code.
With this post I’ll try to summarise the past year.
Last year I changed jobs twice. I left the area where I had been working for more than 6 years - the land registry. Then I worked for some time in a software company developing a trading platform for the Forex market. I had to learn the Ada language as the trading server was developed in this language. Despite the new field and new tools, I did quite well, although there were some difficulties. But I wanted something else…
Private life, this area is best described by the title of E. M. Remarque’s famous novel “All Quiet on the Western Front”. There is nothing to add.
There were lot of changes in the GIS world. The OSM (OpenStreetMap) project has gained worldwide recognition. In addition, Microsoft has given the project access to raster data from its Bing Maps service. Unfortunately, I am not yet involved in the OSM community, but I am very pleased with the development of the project.
ESRI has opened the Geodatabase API, Shapefile is still alive. GIS are pawing their way into the mobile device market.
QGIS is evolving: improved new symbology, raster calculator, QGIS MapServer, many new useful plugins. I have developed and released a few new plugins and continue to improve existing ones. QGIS User Guide was translated into Russian.
This year I was unable to attend the QGIS developer meetings in Pisa and Wrocław. It’s a shame and a pity.
Party of Regions won majorities on most regional and city councils as well as most of the mayoralties.
It’s been 10 years since school and 5 years since university.
On the desktop, I switched from Slackware to Debian testing. There is a dual-boot to Windows XP, as I need it sometimes, e.g. to build QGIS and/or test some bugs (the power of the computer does not allow comfortable use of virtual machines).
Basically, this is the year I gave up dancing. Most likely, for good.
A few days ago I wrote about the kCube Consulting initiative. The ideas have been collected, and the voting has started. Unfortunately, you can only vote for one option.
So far “Fixing bugs” is leading with 23.8%, followed by “Improving import/export on dwg/dxf” with 8.8% and “QGIS Mobile (e.g. on Android)” with 7.5%.
Tim Sutton gave a good overview of some new features in QGIS: a graphical rule editor (which helps to create rendering rules) and complex styles for vector objects (fill, outline and centre marker).
Yesterday, Martin Dobias added icon support to the QGIS Plugin Manager. Among other things, this will make the display of available plugins more user-friendly and make it easier to navigate through the large list. However, to take advantage of this feature, plugin authors will need to make small changes to their code (add two lines). In the future, after the launch of the new plugin repository, it is planned to add icon support to the Plugin Installer.
Another interesting news — kCube Consulting has decided to help the QGIS project by assigning one of their programmers to work on QGIS for 6 months. You can read more about this on Tim’s blog, and visit the wiki to check out the list of possible tasks and leave your own suggestions.
/me put on “Sax & Sex” and began to add icon support to his plugins and those he could reach.
