R: [postgis-users] A bit off topic, but FOSS GIS clients...

Wed Jan 2 02:59:40 PST 2008

Did you ever try snorkeling???
That incredible variety of fishes, all different colors and sizes???
Why don't they merge into just one super-fish, I can't understand it...???

Speaking seriously, you may like a particular fish, but another person may like another.
If many people like a certain fish, that one will flourish (or disappear, if they all go fishing it).
You, the User, have the responsibility to try all the available fishes and choose your favorite.

As a side note, you may also taste OpenJUMP (or one of it's siblings projects):
	http://www.openjump.org

Bye
Paolo Rizzi

> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
> [mailto:postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net]Per 
> conto di dnrg
> Inviato: lunedì 31 dicembre 2007 16.41
> A: postgis postgis
> Oggetto: [postgis-users] A bit off topic, but FOSS GIS clients...
> 
> 
> This is off-topic. But since many use
> PostGIS/PostgreSQL as a spatial database backend, I
> thought people here may be best equipped to comment. I
> couldn't be the only one wondering about this.
> 
> Quantum GIS is painfully slow rendering and searching
> through data in moderately sized, and evidently even
> tiny, shapefiles. That's *with* scale-dependent
> display set to reasonable values.
> 
> Seems QGIS is a decade or more behind even ArcView 3.2
> (still a great product after all these years) with
> regard to performance and basic (non-OGC and web)
> functionality.
> 
> Will importing the shapefiles into PostgreSQL solve
> the data access speed issues? Is the rendering engine
> itself problematic, or is the slowness a function of
> its inability to work efficiently with shapefiles?
> 
> I find QGIS simply unusable when working with
> shapefiles. Considering many GIS novices still work
> with shapefiles, I'm guessing the lack of
> an efficient FOSS GIS client will stall wider adoption
> of FOSS GIS.
> 
> Am I mistaken, or is FOSS GIS weakest when it comes to
> the non-web based GIS client arena?
> 
> I seriously want to like QGIS, but am having a tough
> time of that presently. Are there other FOSS GIS
> clients that can access, search through, and render
> shapefile data better than QGIS? I'm presuming,
> perhaps falsely, that uDig is no better in
> non-RDBMS-based spatial data access/render
> performance.
> 
> Finally, have the QGIS, uDig, and other folks
> considered joining forces to create a killer GIS
> client? I find it depressing to see many different
> fiefdoms in the FOSS community generally. If several
> projects merged, it could lead to one heck of a FOSS
> software product rather than, perhaps, several
> marginal ones.
> 
> One of the beauties of FOSS is that anyone with a
> vision can start a project and attempt to create
> something better than already exists. However, that
> vision may be realized, if ever, at a glacial pace. I
> myself am impatient, and am not a software developer.
> But if I was a developer, I would want to find the
> best FOSS GIS client out there and focus efforts on
> it.
> 
> Seems to me if people joined forces more often and
> consolidated projects, QGIS, for instance, might not
> still be choking trying to access, search, and render
> moderately sized shapefiles after 5 years of
> development.
> 
> So what gives? At conferences like FOSS4G, is there
> ever talk of project consolidation? If not, why not? I
> tend to think of all the development hours spent on,
> say, 8 FOSS GIS clients, wasted, when, if
> there was focus, 1 or 2 FOSS GIS clients could really
> kick some butt and give commercial products real
> competition.
> 
> Why doesn't project consolidation happen often--or not
> often enough? Hurt feelings? Unwillingness to judge
> one product over another?
> 
> Have there been no systematic attempts by the
> community to seriously assess what projects are out
> there, find 1 or 2 best of breeds, then encourage the
> focus of development on those?
> 
> I appreciate all the work that's been done on QGIS,
> uDig, and others. But I personally would love to see
> more consolidation so we make larger, quicker strides.
> 
> Final question--if I import large shapefiles into
> PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and use QGIS or uDig, will my
> speed  and usability gripes be extinguished? Honestly
> can't ever imagine using the latest QGIS with
> shapefiles for more than 10 minutes without wanting
> immediately to uninstall it.
> 
> 
> 
>       
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