Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server

[Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer]

Thank you all for your feedback and responses. I will try to get to them all, 
but may be through several emails (due to time and length).

Regis:

Thank you for your thorough reply. I do greatly appreciate the effort 
you put in to your response. For sake of clarity, I will quote just the 
beginning portion of large sections, but my response will be for the entire 
section.


1. First, before jumping to a tool, I would like that we discuss 
globally the communication challenges that all those new tools bring for all 
online communities - QGIS included.

Yes, I agree. I had a QGIS Open Day announcement and discussion that 
happened a couple of months ago (you can watch it here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvTnkGNzSw). I wanted to not only "complain" 
about the existing platforms, but also provide a solution. I had worked with 
Tim Sutton on this Revolt server, and after it's "launch" at the QOD session, I 
had some feedback from Amy and Alexandre.

---
2a. Mailing lists are dying...

Yes. It was actually shortly after the email I originally sent out, 
that GNOME was dropping it's own mailing lists (GNU Mailman 2) and porting them 
over to Discourse (as you mention later). Discourse is a forum solution (not a 
chat solution) that many other organizations and project use. GNOME isn't 
replacing everything with this one solution. They have 3 different platforms in 
place for 3 distinct roles/purposes.
1. Discourse to replace Mailing Lists as the threaded discussion 
platform
2. Matrix to replace IRC (which the Matrix room(s) are bridged to IRC) 
for use as a chat  platform
3. GitLab for all development, patches, feature requests, etc...

We could also aim for this kind of platform. It maybe worth while 
discussing with OSGeo whether they want to migrate all the mailing lists to 
Discourse instead (as Nabble is no more). (Discourse also has an email-able 
interface to still have that "mailing list" experience for those who need it 
(i.e. screen readers) or insist on it). Another "issue" with the mailing lists 
are that we (as in QGIS) do not manage it. The mailing lists are handled by 
OSGeo, so if we need anything related to mailing list administration, we have 
to go through OSGeo for that. (For instance, I had to go through OSGeo to even 
get me added to the mailing list in the first place as the sign-up didn't work; 
and even now, I'm still not fully getting the proper emails I should for this 
mailing list). Just a minor inconvenience with mailing lists, is the archive 
does a hard break between months. This thread, for instance, spans two months, 
October and November. One can't navigate to the October message from within a 
November one with the previous message by thread link.

---
2b. And let's not forget that some people just don't want to use apps, 
and would like to stick to mail forever.

Yeah, there will always be those people (see xkcd 1782). We are in a 
technology field that is moving forward (thankfully we aren't all still using 
GRASS CLI right?) We can't appease everyone. Usually in doing so, we end up 
offending everyone. I would think that the people who insist on still using 
mailing lists (and IRC) are in a vast minority. Our focus should be on the 
community as a whole who would rather have a more user-friendly way of 
interacting with this great community, than a few people who use Arch BTW, 
emacs or vim, and live solely in the command line (this is a bit sarcastic and 
humorous, and not degrading or insulting. I myself use vim (neovim) for 
programming and do like the command line for certain things.) As mentioned 
earlier, Discourse does offer an email solution for interacting with it for 
those people. Also, bridges to exist to bridge platforms over to others (mainly 
developed for those who do prefer to live in IRC). What I'm trying to say here 
is that we have to way the pros and cons, and who our "target audience" is for 
a community site.

---
3. Chats are fun, but messy, and they break our community in sub parts.

Yes. Chats are fun. It's great to be able to say hi to fellow QGIS 
members, ask for help, show off really cool maps (i.e. we're in the 30-Day Map 
Challenge right now). And yes, they can be messy, but organization is key. One 
of the purposes for choosing a platform like Revolt (and this does also include 
Discord) is the ability for multiple rooms for various topics to keep the 
chatting more organized and less messy. This is meant to unify the various 
groups under one umbrella (i.e. the various QGIS mailing lists are disjointed), 
but yet have their own space (either by a single room to themselves, or a group 
of rooms depending on the needs). In Revolt, all rooms are visible (unless you 
specify otherwise for 

[QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server

[Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer]

Greetings Devs!

For those who aren't aware, Tim Sutton and I created a new community 
site with Revolt.

Revolt is a FOSS alternative to Discord that has many of the features 
of Discord (for those who know about Discord), but without the not-so-friendly 
TOS.
Some features are missing, but are planned as Revolt is in very active 
development (such as the overhauled .

I gave a presentation on a QGIS Open Day session regarding the new 
community site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvTnkGNzSw)

A big reason for creating this, was to help centralize and organize the 
community. A key feature is being able to have multiple rooms (channels) for 
various topics all under one single roof. Need a new room for some major thing 
without clogging up the main dev channel (such as Qt 6 work)? Need a room for 
discussing the new QGIS website aside from comments on Figma (already suggested 
to Anita)? Creating separate rooms for these discussions is very easy (takes a 
few seconds), and helps organize things, and increases community involvement 
and feedback.

I have setup already, a couple of development rooms: core development, 
plugin development, translations, documentation, and a general chat for 
hackfests (Carlos, Amy, Raymond, and Tim already posted tons of photos from the 
hackfest in Firenze).

Right now, the server isn't very active. But, I believe that with 
enough key/core members using it, it will gain traction as we use it. There are 
already numerous people signed up for this server.

I recommend checking it out, there are desktop apps, mobile apps, and a 
Web App available (plus with being FOSS, custom apps are completely allowed, 
unlike Discord).
Please feel free to provide feedback. A couple of people have already 
made suggestions; and things have been rearranged, and changed since it's 
initial setup and launch, so nothing is set in stone.

To create an account: https://.revolt.chat
To join the QGIS server: https://rvlt.gg/eRTmS1ZV

Let me know if you have any questions. We made this for the QGIS 
community, as we believe this is a great platform for such a large and active 
community and would like to see it used.

Thanks,

Ethan Snyder
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Re: [QGIS-Developer] [Qgis-community-team] Changelog, please check

[Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer]

Richard:

This new feature is missing from the changelog (probably because it 
didn’t get all the proper tags): https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/48929
It was primarily authored by me (Ethan Snyder), and polished and 
merged by Nyall.

Here’s the original PR which Nyall copied for changes: 
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/48314

Thanks,

Ethan Snyder

From: Tim Sutton 
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2022 7:33 AM
To: Richard Duivenvoorde 
Cc: qgis-developer ; qgis-community 

Subject: Re: [QGIS-Developer] [Qgis-community-team] Changelog, please check

That looks great @Richard Duivenvoorde  thanks so 
much!

Regards

Tim

On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 5:54 AM Richard Duivenvoorde 
mailto:rdmaili...@duif.net>> wrote:
Hi People,

I (silently) added the visual changelog 3.26 to the site already, please check:

https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog326/index.html

for any glitches.

If found, either let me know, or just fix it yourself in the rst at

https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Website/edit/master/source/site/forusers/visualchangelog326/index.rst

so I can push stuff to transifex (for translations) after the packaging is 
finished (when the banner has also been updated).

Regards,

Richard Duivenvoorde
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--
--
​
[Image removed by sender.]
Tim Sutton
Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source:
 * Desktop GIS programming services
 * Geospatial web development
* GIS Training
* Consulting Services
Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee
---
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[QGIS-Developer] Proposed upgrades to the field calculator

[Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer]

Hello Devs:

I would like to propose some changes/upgrades to the field calculator. 
Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions.

-- Primary/Major Changes --

1. Make the Field Calculator window non-modal
* This will allow 2-6 to become practical
* Allows users to modify feature selections

2. Add a dropdown to the top of the window to select a layer
* Similar to the Layer Styling window (the floating & dock-able 
panel)
* Limited to vector layers
* Defaults to the currently selected layer (defaults to an 
empty option on top if not vector)

3. Rename "Ok" button to "Apply" and rename "Cancel" button to "Close"
* This allows users to keep the field calculator window opened 
for multiple edits
* Use cases would be:
- Running the same or similar expression on multiple 
fields
- Assuming #2, running the same of similar expression 
on multiple layers
- Combination of the above 2

4. Change the QGIS UI toolbar button for Field Calculator to a toggle 
button

5. Add checkbox to show/hide fields that are hidden in the editor widget
* Per the comment here: 
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/0aa409b4c67fd5f0dbc31efb3b5314c3f36b19f1/src/gui/vector/qgsfieldcalculator.cpp#L507-L509
* Allows showing/hiding fields that are hidden without having 
to change the editor widget settings
* Useful for needing to reset or bulk-change label placements 
overrides (i.e. adding 90 degrees to all non-null label rotations)

6. *Optional* Make the Field Calculator window a dock-able panel?
* May make more sense for ultra-wide screens, or with the 
function and docs part hidden
* Requires #4


-- Secondary/Minor Changes --

7. Make it more obvious when field calculator is running against a 
selection
* I've been bitten by this when I didn't realize it was using a 
selection, or I forgot to select a few features
* Maybe have this checkbox on the bottom close to the 
"Ok/Apply" button?


I believe these changes will help advance QGIS more into the "Data 
Science" field with being able to work with the data table(s) more efficiently.

Thank you for your time,

Ethan Snyder
GIS/GPS Technician
Remington & Vernick Engineers, Inc.
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[QGIS-Developer] PR Review Request for Layout Scalebar Data Overrides

[Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer]

Hello Devs:

I worked on adding data defined overrides to the layout scalebar item, 
and has passed all the checks and is now waiting review.

This feature is something that I'm missing when I make map books (which 
I do a lot) when the atlas layer is not a regular grid (which is more often 
than not), and I need the scalebar fixed segment size to be very particular 
based off the map scale. When implementing this, I decided to add overrides for 
not just the single field that I needed, but the other probably common items 
including the number of segments to the left and right, the fixed width of a 
single segment (which is what I needed), and the min/max segment size settings.

https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/48314

I look forward to working more with the QGIS code base and adding more 
features.
This is only the beginning.

Thank you for your time,

Ethan Snyder
GIS/GPS Technician
Remington & Vernick Engineers, Inc.
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