[Qgis-developer] Some concerns about QGIS on OS X, part 2

Mac Programmer MacPgmr at fastermac.net
Tue Feb 10 19:54:50 EST 2009


On Feb 10, 2009, at 6:46 AM, Benjamin Ducke wrote:

> Mac Programmer wrote:
>> Unmac-ish behavior:
>> - Non-native dialogs.
>
> Which ones? All of them or just the file dialogs?

Yes, the standard file dialogs like Open.

>
>> - Open dialog doesn't show other mounted volumes.
>> - ~/.qgis   This is a goofy Linux trick that unfortunately Finder  
>> honors, meaning it's difficult to browse your plugins with Finder  
>> unless you know the trick of entering ~/.qgis in Finder's Go | Go  
>> to folder. Why not put the plugins in ~/Library somewhere, maybe  
>> under Preferences or Plug-ins or something?
>
> Rather a Unix standard than a goofy trick, perhaps? Meaning: this is
> what works just fine for perhaps a majority of the developers and  
> users
> on this list. I do agree though, that it would make sense to stick  
> more
> closely to Mac OS X conventions for that particular environment.
> How about you put some work into fine-tuning the Mac OS X version?

A few apps that have been rudely ported to Mac, such as Gimp and  
Mono, do use a "." file or folder, but this is not the way truly  
native Mac apps do it. I see that QGIS does use ~/Library/Preferences  
for its .plist preferences file, so that's good to see.

I'm still evaluating QGIS and trying to figure out whether I belong  
here. Right now all I can do is report issues that I've encountered.

>> - Case-sensitive list in Plugin Manager. Only in some weird Unix  
>> world would I think to look for fTools at the bottom of an  
>> alphabetical list. OS X file system is case insensitive. Lists  
>> should be too.
>
> Well, you did find it. So the system works. And for some reason it  
> seems
> to make sense to a lot of people, including myself.

Let's test that assumption. You go into a bookstore to buy a book of  
poems by ee cummings. You can't find him in the "C" section and give  
up. Unbeknownst to you they had filed his books after "Z".

>> - Too many Linux assumptions. See page 42 in user guide:
>>     Your action text now looks like this:   firefox http:// 
>> google.com/search?q=%NAMES
>
> In this case, rather an assumption that includes Linux and Windows and
> pretty much any other OS QGIS runs on except Mac OS X. It is true
> though, that the user guide needs to cover OS-specific details.
> I suppose we simply don't have enough active Mac users around to
> contribute all of those, so feel free to chip in.
>
>> Wrong. On OS X, Firefox is an app bundle (folder) named  
>> Firefox.app which will not be in the path. Even if it were, this  
>> is the wrong way to launch any app with OS X. Instead, enter  
>> something like this:
>> open "http://google.com/search?q=%NAME"
>
> Which means that you will no longer be able to exchange a QGIS project
> that includes "action links" in an attribute table with users on other
> systems. This may actually be a tough problem and needs some thought.
> Just going the Mac way because it is presumably better is certainly
> not the answer.

I don't think the example works on Windows either. Even if Firefox is  
installed, it won't normally be on the path, so something like this  
would be necessary:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" "http://google.com/ 
search?q=%NAME"

Note that QGIS 1.0 crashes if given anything invalid, so the quotes  
are required, as is the presence of Firefox in the C:\Program Files  
folder.

Actually, to shell to an external application, Linux is kind of the  
odd man out. With both Windows and OS X, you just shell to the  
document file and the OS launches the application that's associated  
with that file. With Windows, all files with a given extension map to  
a single application, so it's not perfect, but on Mac individual  
files can be associated with different apps, thus overriding the  
extension-based default app. Not sure why this doesn't work with QGIS  
on Windows - that is, if using the Win API ShellExecute function,  
only the URL would be needed and Windows will launch your default  
browser to open the URL. For some reason that doesn't work with QGIS.  
Maybe somebody could review how external apps are launched - maybe  
the assumption is that an app will always be specified, which makes  
sense on Linux but not on Windows or OS X.

Thanks.

-Phil


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