Dear everyone, For the past months, I am using QGIS more frequently for my map composition tasks instead of an external graphics app (like Scribus and Adobe Illustrator).
Many thanks for the great improvement of the past versions. Below are my observations and recommendations for future map composer improvements. Note that I am using QGIS 1.4 (on Mac osx 10.5), some issues I will post maybe solved already in 1.5 so disregard them if they are already solved. (Yes, I know I should upgrade, but I don't normally upgrade while in the middle of a critical project :)) Some observed quirks: 1. Text sizes are not the same when viewed in the main map window, map composer and PDF output. As a workaround, I try to set map canvas window to the desired output scale. 2. Sometimes images (using "Add image") with transparent background doesn't appear in the PDF output. However, the PNG output shows the graphic. Setting the opacity to 100% resolves the problem. 3. Long legend text description doesn't wrap around the legend box. 4. Complex line styles (i. e. dashed) doesn't appear in the png output. 4. On a mac, Scale font options uses the mac font option window instead of the usual QGIS font option window (see image link). http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/5074097761_3d6af0fef4_z.jpg For future improvement requests: 1. Layering - most graphic apps have them. In a graphics app, I find it easy to manage my layout when I place the main map in a separate layer over other map elements (legend, scalebar, reference, other decorations). Perhaps a layer visibility toggle option. 2. More text layout options - text wrap for long legends, text alignment, etc. 3. Inter-data layer text collision resolution - for example, I have a point layer for placenames and then another point layer. A nice feature that can recognize label collision between these two layers. 4. Multiple text layout (alignment, type size, type style) in a single text box. As a workaround, I created several textboxes for different styling. All in all, I am a happy QGIS user. Hope to see more improvements with QGIS' cartography. -- cheers, maning ------------------------------------------------------ "Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/ blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/ ------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
