[Qgis-user] report from the field: training on qgis 1.6

[Noli Sicad]

Hi Maning,

Thanks for reporting the result of the training. I am really glad that
you are organizing this training and LGU (Local Government Unit) are
receptive on the use of FOSS.

Thanks.

Regards, Noli



On 3/28/11, maning sambale <emmanuel.sambale at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm back again from another FOSSGeo training on a remote town in the
> Philippines.  For a bit of background, we conducted a five-day basic
> GIS training to a local government unit who is building its staff
> capacity in using GIS for landuse planning and monitoring of LGU
> initiated projects.  The town is very remote and internet is
> non-existent.
>
> Some observations and requests (?):
> 1.  Most of the core functionality of QGIS is complete enough for
> basic GIS operations.  However, you miss half of QGIS's power if you
> don't have the cool user contributed plugins installed.  Since
> internet is not available in this town, what I did is to simply copy
> my plugins folder into the other computers so that they can use some
> of it.  A cool feature would be an offline cache of all core and 3rd
> party plugins.  I don't know how this works, but basically a
> possibility for a single laptop to connect to the internet and then
> update QGIS plugins (including all dependencies).  Back to the town
> office, he/she can then copy the offline cache repo to other
> computers.  Similar to an offline debian repo.
>
> 2.  After the initial install in windows (a mix of XP, Vista and Win7
> machines), when opening a vector layer, the default directory it
> points to is the installed "Program Files/Quantum ..." directory.  It
> would be nice if it defaults to either the "GIS Database" created
> directory or at least to the user's "My Documents"
>
> 3. They had some difficulty in the deleting vectors during editing.
> Within the "Digitizing" toolbox, you can select a vector line and the
> node tool to edit/delete the nodes/vertices.  However, to delete a
> line, you need to highlight a line using the "Select Feature" (this
> tool is in the "Attribute" toolbox group ) and then the "Delete
> Selected" (in the "Digitizing" toolbox).  Note that the "Select
> Feature" is not within the "Digitizing".  Normally, the users tried to
> find the "Select Feature" within the "Digitizing' group icons.
>
> 4. The best feature they liked is the possibility to plot and see
> field collected photos in the map view.  Using a GPS and digital
> camera we geotagged the photo using another external program.  Then
> using photo2shape and evis plugin to visualize the photo location and
> the photo itself.  What's missing so far is the integration of
> geotagging (writing the lat/lon into the exif) as another plugin.
>
> Overall, the participants are very satisfied with QGIS and they are
> happy knowing that they can distribute and install the app to as many
> computers within the town office (actually, the cost of the 5days
> training is not even half of what an single arc license costs). :)
>
>
> --
> cheers,
> maning
> ------------------------------------------------------
> "Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden
> wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/
> blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/
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