[Qgis-developer] SEXTANTE for QGIS has been released

[Victor Olaya]

Hi all

I am glad to announce that a first (tagged as 'experimental') version
SEXTANTE for QGIS has been released. It includes, among other things:

-Full support for SAGA algorithms
-ftool(vector processes) and mmqgis algorithms (these are not only
added to be used directly, but also as real examples of how to create
new algorithms or migrate existing ones into the SEXTANTE platform)
-Support for user-defined R scripts
-Support for user defined Python scripts
-Graphical modeler
-Batch processing interface
-History

You can download it using the QGIS plugin installer

Please, read the manual before using the plugin. You can access it
selecting the "SEXTANTE help" option in the SEXTANTE menu.

This version is still missing some functionalities, but should be
fully usable. Users should be particularly aware of the following
issues:

-External applications (SAGA and R) have been tested mostly on
Windows, but not so much in Linux, so problems might appear on that
platform. No testing has been done at all under Mac OS.
-GRASS algorithms have been deactivated, in order to have a working
version as soon as possible. We hope to have GRASS incorporated into
the set of available algorithms pretty soon
-Although most algorithms support multiple formats for their ouput
layers, these are currently limited to tiff for raster layers,
shapefiles for vector layers and dbf files for tables. This can be
changed easily and will be done in a next version
-Calling external applications might not work if using layers such as
those coming from remote services or DB connections. Please, use just
file-based data by now (we are working on improving that as well, but
it might take time... ;-) )
-Using tables (and also opening those generated by geoalgorithms) is
still a bit in development, since there is no built-in default method
of opening independent tables. By now, attribute tables of vector
layers can be used, but only if these are in shapefile format (since
we can refer to the associated dbf file). We expect to change this
soon, probably creating some plugin to improve that handling of
independent tables (or if anyone can point us to an existing one that
can be coupled with SEXTANTE, that good be even better...)

Once again, read the manual before trying it, as it will greatly help
you to understand SEXTANTE and what you can do with it.

For developers: I know a lot of documentation is needed...hope to have
that solved soon (or at least start to solve it). A SEXTANTE for QGIS
developers manual is also on its way... there is already a mechanism
to create QGIS plugins that register new algorithms in SEXTANTE
(thanks to Alexander Bruy for the suggestion!), but still has to be
documented. I am currently working on an well documented example case,
to be released soon as well

Of course, all bug reports and comments are welcome, since this is
still a beta version.

Thanks in advance for your interest.