Hi Andreas,
I'm following trunk (svn junkie) so during this meeting I've shown up
the label properties panel and it was appreciated but this is not the
excepted functionnality. These "annotations" are text objects and do not
derivate from an attribute, the user can manualy modify their font size,
their oritentation, etc. It is a feature available in MapInfo (ArcGIS
too) and users are expecting it. This isn't the best way to label a map
but even with the huge improvements brough by PAL/labelv2 (even if it
isn't ready to replace the old yet), manual editing is often required to
get a correct output.
The development done by the MEEDDM was a way for some technical persons
to get their hands into the PyQGIS API and a mean to know how easy it
would be to make these changes. They want a deskop GIS that can evolve
and can be modified, both things MapInfo isn't. Further works will be
coordinated with the community as there is a real will to mutualize the
work. If everything goes well, you will soon see new names on this list.
For notice, at first they estimated the time needed for first OpenWOR
version to 30 days, it turned out that 7 days were enough...
Regards,
Jean Roc
Le 26/09/2010 22:15, Andreas Neumann a écrit :
Hi Jean,
Thank you for this interesting information. I understand that the
decision is still pending but that there is a positive attitude towards
QGIS.
As far as labeling/annotation features, there had been recent
improvements in the trunk. And there will be more. This work is funded
from the cities of Uster and Thun in Switzerland. The recent
improvements are around data-defined text properties (font-family, size,
color, rotation, offsets (vertical and horizontal), etc) - basically
porting the old data-defined settings to the new label engine.
Marco will also soon start work on manual label placement with the
option of having different anchor points (aligned with the Swiss
Interlis text placement). This would potentially also be useful for MEEDDM.
Are you aware that annotations also exist in newer QGIS versions? This
was funded by the Kanton of Solothurn. I don't know if the current
annotations satisfy your needs, but it is worth exploring. The
annotations as they are implemented currently are stored in the project
file, not in a separate layer. You probably want the annotation layer
type - but I think that this will be covered by the work mentioned in
the paragraph above. Please let us know your requirements regarding
labeling/annotation - Marco is currently working on them, and maybe your
requirements could be taken care of at the same time.
The Swiss QGIS users are coordinating QGIS development and sharing the
funding efforts as well. We collaborate with the companies Sourcepole
(Marco Hugentobler, Pirmin Kalberer) and Norbit (Jürgen Fischer). If you
are interested, we can also do more international
collaboration/coordination. Of course a lot of issues could be discussed
on the mailinglists, but there could be meetings as well, maybe also at
an upcoming Hackfest, or separate.
In my opinion, new features can be included quite fast into QGIS, if
funding/financing can be organized. Often faster than with commercial
software. Some coordination should be done to avoid double or triple
efforts (same feature developed several times by different parties) and
to maximize the benefits from the financial contributions.
Please keep us informed about the upcoming decision/plans of MEEDDM.
Andreas
On 9/26/10 2:27 PM, MORREALE Jean Roc wrote:
Hi, here is a very short resume of a QGIS party that was organized a few
days ago by the French Ministry of Environment (MEEDDM [1]) to exchange
informations on Quantum GIS, in order to determine the possibility of
its use as one of their GIS desktop tools. Most of the participants were
technical members of the ministry and its local branches, and Vincent
Picavet (OSGEO-fr treasurer) and I (OSGEO-fr/QGIS).
QGIS is being used internally for months by some of their agents or
departments in parallel with the actual official tool, which is MapInfo.
The ministry is ongoing a rationalization of their actual software base,
leading to the adoption of web gis and the study of alternative desktop
tools, namely QGIS. This ministry has already switched to OpenOffice and
changed their Access databases to PostGIS.
No decision has been taken yet but the general opinion on QGIS was
positive, the ministry's technical teams have already produced
documentation set for their internal formations and are conducting use
tests with several services. The main point was to determine if QGIS was
able to fulfill 100% of MapInfo's uses and the answer was mixed : no on
some aspects (no "font/annotation" layer type, different proportional
symbols aka #960, etc.) and far more on others (labelv2, symbology, sql,
etc.).
Several tests were also done to determine the effort needed to customize
QGIS, and two tools were developed :
- SelectPlusFr, a plugin based on Barry ROWLINGSON's SelectPlus
extending the selection tools
- OpenWOR, a plugin which allows to partly open .wor file in QGIS (I'll
post more on that later)
A decision on migrating part of the software base is still to be
discussed, but the technical team of the ministry already intends to
contribute code (aforementioned plugins at least) and would like to
provide financial support to QGIS in some way.
Regards,
MORREALE Jean Roc
[1] http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/
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