<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Hi</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Just to add to the discussion, see also the work we have been doing here: </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><a href="https://plugins.qgis.org/styles/">https://plugins.qgis.org/styles/</a><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">I was rather hoping we could move over from shipping icons and styles with QGIS (beyond the current set, which as Nyall says we cannot change for fear of breaking things for pretty much everyone) and move to a situation where we use the above site as a backend with search and install tools on the QGIS desktop to find and install these resources. It takes an opposite approach to the resources plugin, which as Richard mentions, addresses the complex use case but bypasses humble users who just want to grab an ambulance icon or whatever.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">We already made an API for the styles repo above and my plan was to write a QEP and hopefully crowd fund the QGIS desktop side bits. We would integrate it into the settings -> style manager ui.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Also a side note: I think. we initially tested having the SVGs in a single directory (back in the mists of time) but it was terribly slow in parsing the directory.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Regards</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Tim</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 2:55 PM Jonathan Moules <<a href="mailto:jonathan-lists@lightpear.com">jonathan-lists@lightpear.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>Hi Richard,</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification. No rudeness parsed. :-) Apologies,
I should be clearer.</p>
<p>One of QGIS' biggest weaknesses IMHO is usability; a lot of
progress has been made in this area, but it's an area that still
needs work. The SVG icons are one such area, and while the
Resources Plugin may technically provide a potential solution to
this problem (i.e. just port over the Font-Awesome SVGs into the
plugin), it:<br>
</p>
<p>a) doesn't solve any of the issues I raised</p>
<p>b) makes some of them worse. Now even more duplicate SVGs! The
red cross one adds yet another cross for example, on top of the 5
identical ones already in the core, (and there's the simple marker
too of course..)). And that's literally the first random one I
picked.<br>
</p>
<p>c) introduces new issues. i.e.: unhelpful metadata "<span style="color:rgb(33,37,41);font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,"Noto Sans",sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji","Segoe UI Symbol","Noto Color Emoji";font-size:16px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);float:none;display:inline">This collection contains SVGs by GIS
LAB"</span> (sorry for picking on you, not the only ones ;-) ).</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>> Please try Faunalia's 'Distance Measurement Styles'. One
click and it will be available for you.</p>
<p>Impressive. The Resources Plugin seems to me better suited to
solving a different problem, though if I may provide some
feedback: It took me a good minute or two to figure out how to
access these styles once I'd downloaded them. (Found a bug too,
but I'll open an issue for that :-) ).<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>> But as Saber proposes: please create a QEP so there can be
some centralized discussion.</p>
<p>Is it the way to go? The blurb for QEPs says: "Generally smaller
features do not require a QEP unless they can have large knock on
effect." - looking at them, most of them are large chunks of dev
work, and the rest are for project admin. Conversely, this is a
couple tiny dev features (though I am making assumptions about the
QGIS dev base... ;-) ), and a small chunk of admin work.</p>
<p>Further thought (and an issue with QEPs in general): QEPs as
Issues (which are Pull-based) are not very visible compared to the
list (which is push-based). As in I'd expect barely anyone outside
of project devs are likely to ever go trawling through the QEP
issue tracker (i.e. I never have), whereas everyone on the list
will get emails even if the chose not to read them.<br>
</p>
<p>I mean it's easy enough to do; mostly just copy/past my previous
email. But I see it reducing the audience for the conversation and
not adding anything.</p>
<p>Cheers,</p>
<p>Jonathan<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 2020-07-27 14:03, Richard
Duivenvoorde wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Hi Jonathan,
I do not want to sound rude, but I think you really underestimate the possibilities and complexity of the icons and QGIS styling and styling resources in general.
About the 'Resource Sharing Plugin':
- styling (of points) is never only about the little icon. styling and symbols are complex beasts. If you google the plugins QEP, you will see that it (also) started of as a 'simple todo' but ended up in current form
- did you have a look: because there are a LOT of styling resources already: simple ones (like mine with actually only some icons), but others giving you the capabilities to show all dimension labels and arrows of your geometries, and again others very specific for a certain working area: oil&gas icons, Red Cross-map icons etc etc
I'd be OK with cleaning up, but a good thing on the Resource Plugin is that it fetches a (online, be it on github or on you webserver!) set of styling resources: symbols, styles, icons, colors, whatever is possible. Please try Faunalia's 'Distance Measurement Styles'. One click and it will be available for you.
About metadata and searching: cool, would also be nice if that could work for Resources. Isn't there some kind of SVG-standard for this?
About all in one directory: fine, or at least for the ones QGIS gives you upon install (the 'App' folder). But I also like the way the Resource plugin orders them in folders (see screenshot).
But as Saber proposes: please create a QEP so there can be some centralized discussion.
Regards,
Richard Duivenvoorde
On 7/27/20 1:42 PM, Jonathan Moules wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Hi List,
The more I look at the current SVG icons, the more I'm thinking it really needs some TLC (Tender Loving Care). As far as I can tell, icons are categorised by the directory they're in, so if you want an icon to appear in two categories, you put the icon in there twice... and so that's just what has happened! I suspect the current set has simply accreted over time.
Examples of weirdnesses:
* The "food" and "entertainment" categories are basically identical, but have different icons for the same thing.
* There are at least 7 near-identical aeroplane icons(!)
* There's cycle parking and cycle locking, but no cycle? No car (that's under "gpsicons") but two taxis? Oh, and 5 (five!) aeroplanes to choose from, and multiple types of train. And that's just "transport".
* "Shopping" has a hammer and a pawprint in it... well, I mean, you can buy those things sure, but that seems like a rather odd place to put them.
* "landmark" seems to basically be a subset of "religion", with a museum and a weird icon for a "school" thrown in for good measure.
I'm sure there are many more.
Given the importance of a good symbol library for cartography, this seems like a fairly significant issue, but fortunately it's pretty "easy" to fix (compared to writing a data processing algorithm anyway ;-) ).
My thoughts:
* Move the svg's into a single directory. (Though would break any current projects symbology using them I guess?)
* Use a metadata file to categorise them, so you get a list of categories as now and a single symbol can be in multiple categories.
* Add a search feature so the user can quickly find "museum" without having to guess where it has been categorised.
* Clean up the current symbols by removing duplicates.
* Add the font-awesome symbols (per my thread on the User List) to fill in the gaps and flesh out the collection. As a bonus, it comes with metadata for categories and search terms (YAML files).
* bonus - metadata is internationalised so "museo" (IT), "muzeu" (RO), etc would also work for finding that museum.
Thoughts?
Cheers,
Jonathan
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre></pre>
</blockquote>
</div>
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