Jean Roc,<br><br>2010/9/26 MORREALE Jean Roc <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jr.morreale@enoreth.net">jr.morreale@enoreth.net</a>></span><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi, here is a very short resume of a QGIS party that was organized a few<br>
days ago by the French Ministry of Environment (MEEDDM [1]) to exchange<br>
informations on Quantum GIS, in order to determine the possibility of<br>
its use as one of their GIS desktop tools. Most of the participants were<br>
technical members of the ministry and its local branches, and Vincent<br>
Picavet (OSGEO-fr treasurer) and I (OSGEO-fr/QGIS).<br>
<br>
QGIS is being used internally for months by some of their agents or<br>
departments in parallel with the actual official tool, which is MapInfo.<br>
The ministry is ongoing a rationalization of their actual software base,<br>
leading to the adoption of web gis and the study of alternative desktop<br>
tools, namely QGIS. This ministry has already switched to OpenOffice and<br>
changed their Access databases to PostGIS.<br>
<br>
No decision has been taken yet but the general opinion on QGIS was<br>
positive, the ministry's technical teams have already produced<br>
documentation set for their internal formations and are conducting use<br>
tests with several services. The main point was to determine if QGIS was<br>
able to fulfill 100% of MapInfo's uses and the answer was mixed : no on<br>
some aspects (no "font/annotation" layer type, different proportional<br>
symbols aka #960, etc.) and far more on others (labelv2, symbology, sql,<br>
etc.).<br>
<br>
Several tests were also done to determine the effort needed to customize<br>
QGIS, and two tools were developed :<br>
- SelectPlusFr, a plugin based on Barry ROWLINGSON's SelectPlus<br>
extending the selection tools<br>
- OpenWOR, a plugin which allows to partly open .wor file in QGIS (I'll<br>
post more on that later)<br>
<br>
A decision on migrating part of the software base is still to be<br>
discussed, but the technical team of the ministry already intends to<br>
contribute code (aforementioned plugins at least) and would like to<br>
provide financial support to QGIS in some way.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
MORREALE Jean Roc<br></blockquote><div><br>These are great news, thanks for keeping us posted. An adoption by an institution like a minister could lead to a better consideration for QGIS inside universities, for instance (I'm still facing the old "it's not serious, it's free software" leitmotiv from University prof. here).<br>
<br>
Jeremy<br></div></div>