[Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Jeremy!

Thanks for the discussion - and thanks for developing the improved 
selection tools. I understand that this is a matter of personal 
preference. May I suggest that there could be a global setting to set 
the preferred behavior? In the Options dialogue there are settings for 
the "Identify", "Measure Tool", "Panning and Zooming". The "Panning and 
Zooming" behavior is the perfect example where people's preferences 
diverge as well ... we could have an additional section for the 
"Selection Tools". Users could select "Contains vs. Intersects" and set 
the modifier key for the 'alt'ernative selection method.

Drop Down Buttons: I believe that users often have their preferred 
selection mode, so it would be a good use of a drop-down button. One 
example for the use of the drop-down buttons is the print composer. See 
the "alignment" and "put to front/back" tools on the upper right.

I also have a question on the tools - are they now part of the QGIS core 
and are they supposed to replace the existing "selection tools"? If yes, 
wouldn't it be better to call the toolbar just "Selection Tools" instead 
of "Advanced Selection Tools". Yes, they are "advanced" now, but in a 
year or so, they will be regarded just as the "standard selection tools" 
that everybody is expecting to find. One could also integrate the 
selection tools into another standard toolbar that is always visible? I 
was thinking that it would be great to integrate the selection tools 
into the same toolbar where the old selection tools had been (the 
toolbar that is called the "Attributes Toolbar"), but maybe reduce them 
to three buttons, one of them being a drop-down button. There could be 
one regular button for single select, one drop-down button for 
multiselect (incl. all the various multiselection tool variations, the 
rectangular tools should probably be the default selection) and one 
button for deselecting all elements.

Thanks also for the hint on the keyboard shortcuts!

Andreas

On 8/14/10 5:41 AM, Jeremy Palmer wrote:
> Hi Marco and Andreas et al,
>
> I agree there could be some confusion for existing QGIS users. However many applications that I have come from such as MapInfo and mapobjects which have these selection tools use the contains method. While it all depends on your point of view, I believe these applications got it correct. The main reason for this is humans are not very accurate (well at least in terms of the precision of the geometries) when defining selection areas with the mouse. Generally when selecting groups of complex geometries by intersects, one inaccurate click can mean a bad end selection set. I know always find myself selecting the wrong set of polygons when using the intersects rectangle select tool. I do agree that when selecting simple geometries like points and boxes its ok. Maybe more users can comment on this?
>
> Also note that I did create the single selection tool which always selects features by intersection. For single selects this of course is the natural way of doing things.
>
> Sorry I was developing on windows and didn't know about the Alt key problem. I thought it was a good key to use for the ‘alt’ernative selection method. Applications from ESRI and AutoCAD use this key all the time - but again those are windows centric applications! Not sure what to do here because the toggle button idea seems clunky. Maybe we could make the modifiers configurable?
>
> Andreas - The toolbar can be hidden and you can use hot keys or menus if screen real estate is at a premium.  I've not looked at drop down buttons before, but maybe it could work...
>
> Cheers
> Jeremy
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Marco Hugentobler [marco.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch]
> Sent: Saturday, 14 August 2010 1:26 a.m.
> To: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: [Qgis-developer] advanced selection tools (r14071)
>
> Hi
>
> The advanced selection tools are really great!
>
> Just two suggestions: wouldn't it be more intuitive to select all the
> intersecting features if no key is pressed and select only the contained
> features if key modifier pressed? Currently, it is the other way round, so it
> might confuse users who are already familiar with QGIS.
>
> Also, the alt-key is quite hard to use (at least on kde), because it moves the
> whole window if it is pressed before the mouse drag.
>
> Regards,
> Marco
>
>
> --
> Dr. Marco Hugentobler
> Sourcepole - Linux&  Open Source Solutions
> Webereistr. 66, CH-8134 Adliswil, Switzerland
> marco.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch http://www.sourcepole.ch
> Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee
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