Hi Arni,
I think the QGIS community should start an effort to better support the
Geopackage format (or any OGR format) - and should spend some financial
resources to allow a developer to work several days to improve support
for the Geopackage format. I suggested that to the QGIS PSC, but it
doesn't seem to be a priority at the moment. Other issues seem to be
more pressing (such as bug fixing, infrastructure, developer meetings).
However, any organization can come up and fund development to improve
the situation. Or start a crowd-funding initiative to collect financial
ressources from several organizations/people. It is just that noone had
enough resources (money or time) to get rid of the Shapefiles in many
places.
The most difficult problem to solve is Processing with SAGA, but other
than that, at least the "Save AS" and the vector menu could be improved
to offer e.g. Geopackage as default, or let the user choose any OGR format.
If you would start such an initiative I would very much support it. And
who knows - maybe even the QGIS PSC would partially support such an
initiative (maybe also financially).
Andreas
On 28.07.2015 18:20, Árni Geirsson wrote:
Thank you Alex - that answers my question completely.
Arni
Árni Geirsson
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On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 4:15 PM, Alex Mandel
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
It's more elaborate than that. Not all applications in the toolbox can
read Spatialite yet either (e.g. SAGA). So the intermediate is
something
all the tools can use. At some point the toolbox might get
developed to
were any ogr data source can be used for the intermediates, but it
isn't
there yet. I ran into this issue with Postgis a couple of years
ago, and
the whole point of using Postgis was to escape the limitations of the
shapefile (particularly file size).
In some ways if you use Spatialite or Postgis you don't actually
need a
lot of the basic tools as those can all be done with SQL via the DB
Manager or QSpatialite.
As for Geopackage, keep in mind it's an exchange format. Even with 2.8
I've had no issues reading GPKG files in, though I've been
creating them
with ogr2ogr on the command line to convert whole databases at a time
between Spatialite and other formats.
Shapefile still remains the lowest common denominator. I agree other
formats should be suggested first by the save dialog since shp can
cause
data loss (date/time, field names, etc).
Thanks,
Alex
On 07/28/2015 09:04 AM, Árni Geirsson wrote:
> Thanks for the answer Jim. I understand that the shapefiles are
lingua
> franca but to me that would imply that they should be used when
exchange
> with other applications is needed - which is not always. But I
had not
> realized that I might be constraining the set of available tools
if I use
> SpatiaLite. Does this mean that if I have my date in SpatiaLite,
many of
> the tools in the Processing toolbox would not be available to me?
>
> Arni
>
>
> Árni Geirsson
> *Alta ehf* // +354 582 5000 <tel:%2B354%20582%205000> // +354
897 9549 <tel:%2B354%20897%209549>
> www.alta.is <http://www.alta.is> // Alta á Twitter
<http://twitter.com/alta_ehf> // Alta á
> Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alta/161795813838691?v=wall>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 3:54 PM, James Keener <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>> More tools support it. Spatialite wasn't supported in esri
until very
>> recently and other tools may not support anything but shape
files. It's
>> become a lingual franca, and like English: it's terrible, but
works well
>> enough.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> On July 28, 2015 11:38:24 AM AST, "Árni Geirsson" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello
>>> I find it interesting that the ancient shapefile format is (or
at least
>>> appears to be) the default file format for QGIS when
SpatiaLite seems to be
>>> a much more capable format. I have been using mostly
shapefiles and when
>>> using for example the tools under the vector menu,
intermediate results are
>>> saved as shapefiles, leading to a big pile of files after a
short session
>>> of vector processing. Now, I have discovered that by using the
processing
>>> tools the intermediates can be temporary files (still
shapefiles, just
>>> hidden away in a temporary folder). After saving a temporary
file as a
>>> SpatiaLite file, I can enter field names longer than 10
characters but I
>>> can not add a text field that accommodates more than 255
characters.
>>> So my question is: Why is the shapefile format the default?
>>>
>>> I have also noticed that with 2.10 I can save in Geopackage
format. Does
>>> that mean that support for this format has improved?
>>>
>>> Any insights are highly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Arni Geirsson
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Qgis-user mailing list
>>> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
>>>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my
brevity.
>>
>
>
>
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