[Qgis-user] how to contour delimited text files

[Alister Hood]

> Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 12:17:52 -0700
> From: john raskulinecz <jerasku at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [Qgis-user] how to contour delimited text files
> To: <qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org>
> Message-ID: <SNT143-W646F6497EBC512133F24E4BE440 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Dear List, Ihave QGIS 1.7.4 rinning on win 7 and am trying to contour a
> delimeted txt file that shows great. Ithought there was a contour plugin i
> used before but can't locate it now. Does any one know where it might be
> found?Thanks in advance,J.R.P.S. Thanks to all have helped me  in the past

Did you do "Plugins>Fetch Python Plugins>Repositories>add 3rd party repositories"?  Did it add the "QGIS contributed" repository?
You will also need to have the latest matplotlib package from OSGeo4W.  I'm not sure if it is installed with QGIS.

> Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:48:59 +0800
> From: Ramon Andi?ach <custard at westnet.com.au>
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] how to contour delimited text files
> To: qgis-user <qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org>
> Message-ID: <7E538A49-FE79-4397-B42E-02B3A3E866CC at westnet.com.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> [erk, not awake yet. Meant to send to whole list]
> 
> 
> Hi J.R.,
> 
> I still have that plugin on my computer, but it's very broken. The last
> time the contour plugin was mentioned on this list was to say it had been
> deprecated and that will be why you can't find it anymore.
> 
> I hope someone else with more knowledge will pitch in. I *think* the
> current recommended path is to use the Raster tools to turn your points
> into a raster and then contour that.
> 
> -ramon.

What version of QGIS and Python and matplotlib do you have?  For a time the plugin required a recent version of matplotlib which on Windows is only available for Python 2.7, but QGIS was still using Python 2.5.  But now that QGIS is available on Windows with Python 2.7 and the recent matplotlib, the contour plugin works fine.

I don't understand why people say the contour plugin is deprecated - it works well and is a lot more convenient than using two GDALtools.  Is it that the performance is a lot better with large datasets or something?

Alister