QGIS 1.8 "Lisboa"

21.06.2012 09:29 ·  GIS  ·  qgis, release

Almost a year has passed since the release of QGIS 1.7.0 “Wrocław”. It was supposed to be the last release of the 1.x branch, but time has taken its toll. The developers simply do not have enough resources to maintain several branches simultaneously, so it was decided to abandon the division into “stable” and “development” branches. All future releases will be based on the master branch. The result of these revised plans is the release of QGIS 1.8.0 “Lisboa” today.

This release contains many bug fixes and a significant number of new features. In addition, QGIS 1.8.0 has some minor API changes that affect the print composer. If you are using this part of the API in your plugin and are experiencing problems, the developers will be happy to help you adapt your code.

You can find a detailed description of the new features in the official announcement. I will only mention the most interesting ones:

• QGIS Browser is both a standalone application and a dockable panel within QGIS. It simplifies navigation through the file system and connected data sources (PostGIS, WMS, WFS…), allows you to view metadata and preview data, add layers to the map using drag and drop
• DB Manager is a new database management plugin. It supports PostgreSQL/PostGIS and SQLite/SpatiaLite, support for other databases can easily be added if needed. The plugin allows you to view tables (including those containing spatial information), add tables to a map or import layers from other data sources into the database, run queries, and display the results as layers
• Heatmap plugin — a new core plugin for creating raster heat maps from point vector data
• the functionality of the Terrain Analysis plugin has been updated and extended: in addition to calculating slope, exposure, and roughness index, the ability to create shaded and colour relief maps has been added
• interface customisation tool — a dialogue that allows you to hide different parts of the QGIS interface (panels, buttons, widgets…)
• reorganisation of plugins — new menus “Vector”, “Raster”, “Internet”, “Database” have been added. All core plugins and some third-party plugins have been updated and now create their own menus in the corresponding top-level menus
• MSSQL Spatial support — added a new data provider to connect to Microsoft SQL Server spatial tables
• support for compressed datasets — transparent opening of raster and vector data from zip/gzip archives
• two new tools in the “Vector” menu: “Densify geometries” and “Create spatial index”
• “Export/add geometry column” tool can perform calculations on an ellipsoid and in the layer or project CRS
• and much more