RE: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)
Hi Andreas, Sorry about the late reply. Sounds like a good plan all round. Looks like http://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/changeset/14101 has dealt with the toolbar menu issues - Thanks Jurgen! I have submitted a patch to the http://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/ticket/2938 which allows the user to define the default way for selecting features. As a minimum users with the KDE and Gnome windowing systems can switch the behaviour in the global options. In terms of the option for the user definable alternative select key, I think having an option for this is a hard to implement cleanly. Mainly because there are no more modifier keys left as the Shift and Ctrl keys are already in use. We could start allowing any keyboard shortcut, but that could get messy with the user definable short-cut actions already in place. Any ideas? Cheers, Jeremy -Original Message- From: Andreas Neumann [mailto:a.neum...@carto.net] Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 8:10 PM To: Jeremy Palmer Cc: Marco Hugentobler; qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071) 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 [marco.hugentob...@sourcepole.ch] Sent: Saturday, 14 August 2010 1:26 a.m. To: qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org Subject: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071) Hi
Re: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)
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 [marco.hugentob...@sourcepole.ch] Sent: Saturday, 14 August 2010 1:26 a.m. To: qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org 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 marco.hugentob...@sourcepole.ch http://www.sourcepole.ch Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee __ This message contains information, which is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not peruse, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately (Phone 0800 665 463 or i...@linz.govt.nz
[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 marco.hugentob...@sourcepole.ch http://www.sourcepole.ch Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee ___ Qgis-developer mailing list Qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
Re: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)
On Aug 13, 2010, at 7:39 AM, Andreas Neumann wrote: All in all I am a little concerned that the selection tools take up too much screen space - which brings us back to the discussion - why don't we introduce drop-down buttons for selection mode? +1 John ___ Qgis-developer mailing list Qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
Re: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)
On Aug 13, 2010, at 7:39 AM, Andreas Neumann wrote: All in all I am a little concerned that the selection tools take up too much screen space - which brings us back to the discussion - why don't we introduce drop-down buttons for selection mode? +1 ___ Qgis-developer mailing list Qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
