Here I post my thoughts, QGIS tips and tricks, updates on my QGIS-related work, etc.
07.01.2013 13:45 · Notes · books
Yesterday I finished “The Idiot” by Dostoyevsky. Impressions are twofold, it was a bit easier to read than “Crime and Punishment”, but in general I did not like it. I haven’t decided what to read next, and I won’t have much time for books in the near future.
31.12.2012 16:35 · Notes · year-in-review
Traditionally, at the end of the year, I try to summarise the most important and interesting events.
This year I have had to work hard. In addition to working on various projects, I have been quite active in QGIS, especially at the beginning of the year. In total, more than 50 bugs in QGIS were fixed, and 4 new plugins were released. It looks like next year will be even more intense.
The year was rich in releases: GDAL 1.9.0 (and related shapefile encoding issues), Proj 4.8, QGIS 1.7.4 and 1.8.0, PostGIS 2.0 (topology and raster), OTB 3.12 (full support for Πλειάδες). 181317 OrbView-3 scenes have been released under the Public Domain licence. Also, this year SEXTANTE for QGIS was announced — a powerful geoprocessing platform that soon became part of QGIS.
QGIS is now 10 years old.
I released several new QGIS plugins, including Geotag and import photos, and participated in GSoC as a mentor. For a short time I became a SEXTANTE core developer (then it was integrated into QGIS and I lost that title).
Moved this blog to my “own” server.
Happy New Year!
15.12.2012 14:11 · GIS · qgis, processing, howto
TauDEM (Terrain Analysis Using Digital Elevation Models) is a set of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) tools for extracting and analysing hydrological information from the topography represented by a DEM. It was developed at Utah State University (USU) for hydrological analysis of digital elevation models and watershed delineation.
TauDEM has recently been integrated into QGIS as a SEXTANTE provider. This makes it possible to run TauDEM tools directly from QGIS, easily perform complex analysis workflows, and view the generated results.
In this post, I will show how to perform some hydrological analysis tasks in QGIS using TauDEM, namely how to delineate watersheds and extract stream networks.
Read more ››About a week ago, Alessandro Furieri announced the release of SpatiaLite 4.0.0 — a spatial extension to SQLite. There are not just a lot of changes, there are VERY many of them. And some of them may cause compatibility problems, so all users should read the migration guide.
Among the most interesting features:
And yesterday, the SpatiaLite data provider in QGIS was updated. Compatibility with databases created in previous versions of SpatiaLite is maintained. However, you will need to convert your databases to the SpatiaLite 4.0.0 format (you can use spatialite_convert from spatialite-tools) to take full advantage of the new features.
02.12.2012 15:54 · Notes · books
Finished “Anna Karenina”. The next book will probably be Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot”.
30.11.2012 21:44 · Site · blog
With the Nth attempt, I set up the web-server and transferred the site to it.
I’m not much of a sysadmin, so not everything has been done the way I wanted, and not everything I planned is there and working. I will try to add what is missing over time. So the site may be down for short periods of time..
27.11.2012 17:55 · GIS · qgis, processing, howto
SEXTANTE is a powerful and flexible platform for performing geospatial analysis in QGIS. It provides access to its own geoprocessing functions as well as algorithms implemented in third-party applications, making analysis easier and more productive.
Initially written in Java and only available to gvSIG users, SEXTANTE has gradually extended its presence to other GIS. In 2012, a Python version was developed for use with QGIS. It immediately attracted a lot of interest from users and developers alike, and in September 2012 SEXTANTE was integrated into QGIS as a core plugin.
SEXTANTE in QGIS allows you to use the main features of well-known third-party GIS tools (SAGA GIS, GRASS GIS, TauDEM, OrfeoToolBox…) and algorithms implemented directly in SEXTANTE (fTools, MMQGISX…) via a unified interface.
It also offers a wide range of possibilities for automating data processing: combining repetitive steps of applying algorithms to data in a custom analysis model, writing and using Python scripts, batch processing mode. Advanced users can further increase their productivity by using SEXTANTE algorithms and the Python console together.
Read more ››18.10.2012 16:41 · GIS, Notes · qgis, plugins
Two of my plugins are in the TOP-20 by downloads, 4 by ratings and 5 by votes. It’s a small thing, but it’s nice.
Actually, the list is not complete, as there are still C++ plugins that are distributed as source code and plugins that are not published in the official repository. And some plugins, although they have been significantly reworked by me and are now maintained by me, were originally created by others.
11.10.2012 08:33 · GIS · qgis, howto
As I wrote before, Oslandia kept their promise, and during the 8th QGIS developer meeting, the Atlas plugin was integrated into the QGIS print composer. This has been made possible thanks to the financial support (although not the full amount has been raised) of the following individuals and organisations:
The workflow remains the same: create a print layout and specify a coverage layer that will be used to generate the atlas. In addition, it is now possible to create complex labels using the full power of QgsExpression and the attributes of the coverage layer.
Let’s go through the process of making an atlas step by step.
Read more ››07.10.2012 17:52 · Notes · qgis, meetings
The 8th QGIS developer meeting, also known as the hackfest, has come to an end.
This time there were no presentations, which had been a feature of the previous two meetings, and this had a positive impact on the results: more than 120 commits were made, and about 60 bug reports were closed. Among the most notable changes:
On top of that:
According to the participants, this meeting was one of the most productive, which was greatly facilitated by the venue — Villa Vogelsang.