[QGIS-Developer] Profile plugins

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi all,
any further comments?
Cheers.

On 27/08/19 18:11, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> Hi Javier,
> 
> On 27/08/19 10:54, Javier Becerra Elcinto wrote:
> 
>> (Current maintainers of ProfileTool here.)
>>
>> I agree with you that having multiple plugins for the same task (given
>> the limited resources available) seems far from an ideal situation, and
>> would be glad to collaborate with other developers to join forces in a
>> unified solution.
> 
> Glad you agree.
> 
>> I am not aware of the situation of the other plugins at the moment, (we
>> checked on both "VoGIS Profile Tool" and "qProf" and decided to work on
>> Profile Tool when we had to make a choice), but here goes my status
>> report on Profile Tool codebase/functionality/documentation/support. It
>> would be nice if we could get a feature list from the other plugins, see
>> what is missing/what users find important in every plugin, and trace a
>> 'unification routemap' from there.
> 
> Agreed fully, this seems the best approach.
> 
>> Codebase:
>>
>> -We made quite a refactoring effort during migration to QGis 3 to keep
>> ui and calculations mostly separated. There are still some minor changes
>> to do, but we are close to get there.
> 
> a sane thing to do for sure
> 
>> -We have no unit tests, and this is something that should be worked on.
>>
>> -Some parts of the code would appreciate a little love to use more
>> pythonic/dry constructions.
>>
>> -We got rid of most of the stability issues (crashes and python errors),
>> though some may still remain.
>>
>> Functionality:
>>
>> -Profile plotted along an interactively defined path, a polyline
>> selected interactively or a vector layer.
>>
>> -Elevation information can be taken from raster and mesh layers.
>> Multiple layers can be added to obtain several profiles simultaneously.
>>
>> -Profile can show height (i.e. the raster value), or slope (in % or deg)
>>
>> -Profile can be sampled all along the input line or only on specified
>> input points.
>>
>> -Profiles can be exported as an image with axes, labels etc in png or
>> svg format, and as a 3D polyline / 2D profile on dxf format (using
>> pyqtgraph backend) and also PDF and PostScript when using Matplotlib.
>>
>> -Profile can be exported in text/csv format (on the table tab).
>>
>> -This is experimental and not documented, but thanks to refactoring
>> ProfileTool can be controlled from another plugin/algorithm, feeding
>> points programatically to create a 'live' profile.
>>
>> -Supports PyQtGraph or Matplotlib backend (not really sure on why there
>> is a need to support both backends).
>>
>> -GUI feels a bit crowded, with many controls and tabs, I think that we
>> can do better.
> 
> a very thorough description, thanks
> 
>> Documentation
>>
>> -No user manual, there are however some tutorials available on blogs,
>> webs, etc.
>>
>> -Not much code documentation.
>>
>> Support:
>>
>> -We are currently on maintenance mode, fixing bugs and making minor
>> modifications/adding small features when possible, but we have less time
>> and resources to work on this than we would like. Next year we may be
>> able to put some more work on it.
> 
> Thanks again, looking forward for other devs' comments.
> 
> Cheers.
> 

-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS.ORG Chair:
http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/