Frank Warmerdam announced the release of GDAL 1.8.0.
GDAL is a free translation library for raster and vector geospatial formats. The library provides applications with a single generic data model for all supported formats. In addition to the library itself, GDAL includes a set of powerful command line utilities for data translation and processing.
The list of changes is impressive, and the adoption of RFC 29 and RFC 30 is particularly pleasing. For example, the changes described in RFC 29 will significantly improve performance and reduce memory consumption when processing vector data (about 1.5-2.5 times, according to tests). So far, SetIgnored is only implemented for shapefiles (by Martin) and SpatiaLite (my patch).
Once threading_branch is merged into trunk, QGIS will open large shapefiles much faster and many geoprocessing scripts will speed up. By the way, I will have to rewrite my data extraction script to take advantage of these changes.
I am looking forward to adding GDAL 1.8.0 to OSGeo4W, especially as Frank promised a global update of OSGeo4W after the release. GDAL 1.8.0 will be the main version instead of the outdated 1.5.4, and Python 2.5 will be replaced by 2.7.
I returned to Zaporizhzhia yesterday, sunburned and a little refreshed. The heat in Crimea is terrible, and the proximity of the sea does not help. In Choban-Kale, at 11 o’clock in the afternoon, we had 53°C in the direct sun (they say it was almost 60°C in Simeiz), and the water temperature was ~28–29°C. However, it is no better in Zaporizhzhia.
While I was on holiday, the next version of QGIS - 1.5.0 “Tethys” - was released. The official announcement is on the QGIS blog. There are many changes: a lot of bugs have been fixed, new tools have been added, and old tools have been improved (fTools, GdalTools, annotations, new georeferencing module). The documentation is actively updated.
QGIS 1.4 “Enceladus” has been released, the announcement can be found on the official blog. This release contains over 200 bug fixes and about 30 new features. It is notable for a new symbology system, a more advanced PAL-based feature labelling engine and other improvements.
Meanwhile, the developers are working on the trunk: it is already possible to reload Python plugins without restarting QGIS, the Python console has been practically rewritten, support for GPS devices has been added, diagrams and plots now use Qwt…
And there is another hackfest planned for the end of March in Italy, details here. I’d love to go, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to.
Less than a month has passed since the release of QGIS 1.2.0 and now… 1.3.0 is available. Pretty fast, huh?
There are not that many changes, mostly bug fixes and minor improvements. There is a tendency to switch to native analysis tools (i.e. not related to GRASS), for example this version includes the “Raster terrain analysis” plugin for terrain analysis.
The announcement, as usual, is available on the official blog.
Release. There are a lot of changes, especially in the digitising tools: undo/redo support, history of edits, feature simplification and merging, ability to remove holes in polygons, and many other useful features. And also added support for attribute table field aliases, support for keyboard shortcut customisation, plugin and provider for working with OpenStreetMap… going through all the new features will take a long time.
The so-called visual changelog can be found on the developers’ blog. I haven’t translated the announcements in the wiki into Ukrainian and Russian yet because the official version isn’t ready yet. I think it will be cleaned up by tonight, and then I can start translating.
Finally! The simultaneous release of QGIS versions 1.0.2 “Kore” (stable release) and 1.1.0 “Pan” (unstable release) was officially announced yesterday. The most notable changes are outlined in the release announcement (Ukrainian version is also available) and Tim’s blog post, while the list of fixed bugs can be found in Trac.
Packages for various Linux distributions and a source code archive can be found on the download page. For Windows users there are two options: the OSGeo4W network installer and a standalone all-in-one installer.
After a long delay of almost half a year, the second release candidate of GIS Geoproject 5.27 has been released. In addition, Eugene updated the site design and slightly revised the navigation (in particular, he removed references to the mysterious “Land Project”).
Among the changes, I would like to highlight the following:
ability to pan the map with the mouse wheel
a new function GetPicketName has been added to the Report Generator. It returns the name of a point by its number in the object contour (Sickle will be happy, now his mega-template will get a finished look)
new functions have been added to the report generator: GetScriptName, GetSemanticName (now I will be happy. An idiot’s dream has come true: you can create generic templates without any ties to the system script)
added “Module Inspector” to monitor the process of loading plugins (Yes!!! Invaluable for debugging plugins)
added support for batch import of IN4 files, bypassing the preliminary analysis processes (also a necessary feature, its absence prompted me to develop my own program, but Geoproject is still more convenient, especially if you need analysis and filtering by multiple criteria).
The full list of changes can be found on the website. There are two versions available for download: the RC1 → RC2 update and the full installation package.