QGIS 2.0 "Dufour"
21.09.2013 12:55 · GIS · qgis, release
More than a year has passed since the release of QGIS 1.8.0. And now, after many months of waiting and several postponements of the release date, QGIS 2.0 “Dufour” is officially announced. This release can be seen as the beginning of a new phase in the life of the project.
So the project is now officially called QGIS. The word “Quantum” in the name never had much meaning, and having two names (Quantum GIS and QGIS) sometimes caused unnecessary confusion. Also, using a shorter and more generic name allows for consistent naming of all components: QGIS Desktop, QGIS Server, QGIS Browser, etc.
Along with the release of version 2.0, the official website has undergone a major overhaul. We hope that the new design will be more convenient and functional, making it easier to find the information you need.
Long-awaited news for Windows users - QGIS is now available in a 64-bit version (both as a standalone installer and via OSGeo4W). Note that *NIX and MacOS users have long been able to use 64-bit packages.
The full list of changes in this release is quite impressive, you can check it out here. The so-called visual changelog is also available. In this post I will only list the most interesting and/or noticeable changes, but there are quite a few of them.
We have made a lot of changes to the QGIS GUI to make it cleaner and easier to use:
- the icon theme has been updated to use the “GIS” theme, which is more consistent and professional
- the layout of the various dialogues has been standardised with extensive use of vertical tabs and collapsible group boxes
- to replace annoying modal message boxes, we have implemented a new non-blocking pop-up notification system with a corresponding API for plugin developers
QGIS 2.0 adds support for even more data sources and many data handling improvements, including:
- added Oracle Spatial data provider
- new OpenStreetMap data provider that works in read-only mode and uses the Overpass API to load data, downloaded data is stored in the SpatiaLite database
- added Web Coverage Service data provider
- WMS data provider now supports WMTS
- complete overhaul of the raster data provider subsystem. We moved to a “raster pipes” architecture — chains of independent operations (data reading, reprojection, resampling, rendering filters, etc.) that can be combined. One of the results is the ability to export open images in any supported format, while changing image resolution, cropping and reprojecting. In addition, it is now possible to save the raster as it is rendered in the GIS, e.g., if a colour palette has been applied to a singleband raster, it can be saved as a georeferenced RGB raster
Among other changes:
- Heatmap plugin optimisations and improvements
- SEXTANTE integrated into QGIS as a core plugin and renamed to Processing
- unified Plugin Manager that allows you to download, install and manage plug-ins in a single window
- new Python console with syntax highlighting, autocompletion, customisable fonts and other improvements
- support for custom expression functions
- support for project macros
- new Python API. QGIS has been migrated to use SIP API v2, Qt types are automatically converted to the corresponding Python types
- improved layer tree
- many symbology and labelling enhancements: support for blending modes, mode data-defined properties, colour ramp support, etc.
- and much more