QGIS hackfest 2010 (Wrocław) recap
16.11.2010 12:43 · Notes · qgis, meetings
Based on the report published on the Linfiity Geo Blog and my own impressions.
The 4th QGIS hackfest, held from 11 to 15 November in Wrocław, Poland, attracted 29 participants (28 people and one dog). All participants did their best to make QGIS even better. A lot was accomplished in four days: hundreds of commits, demonstrations of new features, and many productive discussions. The meeting was organised by Paweł Netzel with the help of Milena Nowotarska, Robert Szczepanek, Maciej Sieczka and Borys Jurgiel and took place at the Department of Climatology and Atmospheric Protection of the University of Wroclaw.
My contribution — numerous improvements to the fTools plugin. When using the “Merge shapefiles to one” tool, it is now possible to select not only a folder, but also individual files. The “Simplify geometry” tool has been redesigned: I added a customisable simplification threshold and the ability to simplify the whole layer or only selected features; simplification can be done “in place” or by creating a new shapefile; “in place” simplification supports undo/redo; at the end of the simplification plugin shows a report about the total number of vertices in a layer before and after simplification.
In the following, you will find an overview of the most important topics that were discussed during the hackfest as well as most notable changes.
Plugins
One of the most heated discussions, led by Borys Jurgiel and Martin Dobias, was about plugins. We decided to review the plugin management system in particular:
- the way plugins are stored in the repository
- the way they are displayed and organised in the user interface
- metadata that all plugins should have
Development of the new repository has already started, and Giuseppe Sucameli has modified the QGIS API to add new top-level menus (“Vector”, “Raster” and “Database”) for the corresponding plugin types.
Threading branch
Martin Dobias presented the threading branch. This branch is the result of his work during the Google Summer of Code on improving the performance of QGIS. Martin has done a lot of work to speed up layer rendering and improve the overall performance of QGIS, and has also submitted several patches to related projects, in particular GDAL.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Another discussion was focused on the user interface. We tried to identify places where GUI improvement or revision is needed, and fixes various inconsistencies in QGIS dialogs. One of our goals is to make QGIS usable on small screen devices such as netbooks. You can already see some of the results by downloading the nightly build or building QGIS yourself.
Globe plugin
Pirmin Kalberer presented his work on creating a 3D globe in QGIS. The globe is linked to the QGIS map canvas, so that all vector and/or raster layers displayed on the map are automatically displayed on the globe. In addition, the globe is able to create a “true 3D” when using stereo glasses.
Labelling
Marco Hugentobler has worked on improving data-defined labels. It is now possible to add fields to the layer attribute table to store the x and y coordinates of labels, and when labels are enabled, they will be placed at the given position. If labels have no associated coordinates, they will be placed automatically. The “feature” of this tool is that the labels can be moved, and the attribute table will be updated with new coordinates.
Attribute table management
Jürgen Fischer has improved attributes management. For example, when merging multiple features, you can now select values for each field of the final feature from the list of values of the original features. He has also added support for default attribute values, which is particularly useful when digitising objects.
Snapping
Cédric Mori has made the snapping options more accessible. His patch makes it possible to use snapping options dialogue as a floating panel, making it easier to access the options while digitising.
PostGIS versioninig
Horst Düster has continued to improve his plugin for versioning PostGIS databases. The plugin adds support for SVN-like functionality to PostGIS, for example allowing multiple users to edit the same table at the same time, get specific changes and resolve conflicts.
User Guide update
Anne Ghisla and Otto Dassau have done a great job updating the User Guide and describing many of the new features of the upcoming QGIS 1.6.0.
Certification
One of the discussions focused on the possibility of creating a certification programme for QGIS users. We want to create standards and a centralised certification programme so that the quality of training in Poland will be the same as the quality of training in South Africa.
Workshops
There were several workshops on QGIS plugin development for students and new community members.
Offline editing
Mathias Walker has been working on improving his “Offline Editing” plugin, which recently became part of QGIS. The plugin allows you to export layers from a PostGIS database for offline use (e.g. field data collection), edit them and then synchronise the changes with the main database.
Migration to Git
Another discussion was about using the Git version control system in the project. Pirmin Kalberer gave an interesting overview of Git and how it can be used with SVN. Perhaps some developers will now use Git, but there are no plans to change the version control system for the time being.
PostGIS plugins
There are several plugins for working with PostGIS databases, and they have partially overlapping functionality. We discussed the plans and actions needed to merge these plugins into one tool. It was also decided to create a separate menu for tools that work with databases.
GRASS
Paolo Cavallini and Giuseppe Sucameli worked on organising the list of GRASS modules and improving the user interface of the GRASS plugin.