Hi Jeremy!
Thanks for the discussion - and thanks for developing the improved
selection tools. I understand that this is a matter of personal
preference. May I suggest that there could be a global setting to set
the preferred behavior? In the Options dialogue there are settings for
the "Identify", "Measure Tool", "Panning and Zooming". The "Panning and
Zooming" behavior is the perfect example where people's preferences
diverge as well ... we could have an additional section for the
"Selection Tools". Users could select "Contains vs. Intersects" and set
the modifier key for the 'alt'ernative selection method.
Drop Down Buttons: I believe that users often have their preferred
selection mode, so it would be a good use of a drop-down button. One
example for the use of the drop-down buttons is the print composer. See
the "alignment" and "put to front/back" tools on the upper right.
I also have a question on the tools - are they now part of the QGIS core
and are they supposed to replace the existing "selection tools"? If yes,
wouldn't it be better to call the toolbar just "Selection Tools" instead
of "Advanced Selection Tools". Yes, they are "advanced" now, but in a
year or so, they will be regarded just as the "standard selection tools"
that everybody is expecting to find. One could also integrate the
selection tools into another standard toolbar that is always visible? I
was thinking that it would be great to integrate the selection tools
into the same toolbar where the old selection tools had been (the
toolbar that is called the "Attributes Toolbar"), but maybe reduce them
to three buttons, one of them being a drop-down button. There could be
one regular button for single select, one drop-down button for
multiselect (incl. all the various multiselection tool variations, the
rectangular tools should probably be the default selection) and one
button for deselecting all elements.
Thanks also for the hint on the keyboard shortcuts!
Andreas
On 8/14/10 5:41 AM, Jeremy Palmer wrote:
Hi Marco and Andreas et al,
I agree there could be some confusion for existing QGIS users. However many
applications that I have come from such as MapInfo and mapobjects which have
these selection tools use the contains method. While it all depends on your
point of view, I believe these applications got it correct. The main reason for
this is humans are not very accurate (well at least in terms of the precision
of the geometries) when defining selection areas with the mouse. Generally when
selecting groups of complex geometries by intersects, one inaccurate click can
mean a bad end selection set. I know always find myself selecting the wrong set
of polygons when using the intersects rectangle select tool. I do agree that
when selecting simple geometries like points and boxes its ok. Maybe more users
can comment on this?
Also note that I did create the single selection tool which always selects
features by intersection. For single selects this of course is the natural way
of doing things.
Sorry I was developing on windows and didn't know about the Alt key problem. I
thought it was a good key to use for the ‘alt’ernative selection method.
Applications from ESRI and AutoCAD use this key all the time - but again those
are windows centric applications! Not sure what to do here because the toggle
button idea seems clunky. Maybe we could make the modifiers configurable?
Andreas - The toolbar can be hidden and you can use hot keys or menus if screen
real estate is at a premium. I've not looked at drop down buttons before, but
maybe it could work...
Cheers
Jeremy
________________________________________
From: Marco Hugentobler [[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, 14 August 2010 1:26 a.m.
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)
Hi
The advanced selection tools are really great!
Just two suggestions: wouldn't it be more intuitive to select all the
intersecting features if no key is pressed and select only the contained
features if key modifier pressed? Currently, it is the other way round, so it
might confuse users who are already familiar with QGIS.
Also, the alt-key is quite hard to use (at least on kde), because it moves the
whole window if it is pressed before the mouse drag.
Regards,
Marco
--
Dr. Marco Hugentobler
Sourcepole - Linux& Open Source Solutions
Webereistr. 66, CH-8134 Adliswil, Switzerland
[email protected] http://www.sourcepole.ch
Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee
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