[Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)

[Jeremy Palmer]

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.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch]
Sent: Saturday, 14 August 2010 1:26 a.m.
To: qgis-developer at 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.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch http://www.sourcepole.ch
Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee
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