[Qgis-developer] fTools (Vector) concern

[ahmed at elegantdesigns.ca]

Just for the record, I wouldn't have a masters degree if it wasn't for qgis
and ftools

On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 16:47:19 +0000, Carson Farmer <carson.farmer at gmail.com>
wrote:
> A response:
> 
>> I'm very disappointed  with  fTools (Vector) and when I say 'I'
>> unfortunately I reflect an opinion of a larger community.
> I'm terribly sorry to hear this, and this is certainly not the
> feedback I've been getting in my email inbox, otherwise I would have
> asked for help sooner.
> 
>> At  the  our bug hunt and continuously after I believe 50% of the bugs
>> we  found were from fTools (and this is very considerable number, trac
>> regulars  for sure can tell). We've raised some seriously disappointed
>> comments like "Nothing works in Vector menu". I simply couldn't test
>> Simplify features because it doesn't work, as well. Everytime I (or
>> other people from our group) open an instrument from Vector, there is a
>> string of bugs to
>> fill and this is very tiring and very bad looking in places where we
>> try to make people move from some GIS to QGIS.
> Unfortunately, many of these comments aren't very helpful, and
> obviously aren't making it into track. I had a quick look just now,
> and as far as I can tell, only a fraction of the reported bugs have
> anything to do with fTools (though I'll certainly admit there are
> fTools bug reports there).
> 
>> I suggest that a serious review of Vector tools is needed (hackfest?),
>> first by
>> maintainer, then by a single user checking _all_ instruments under
>> both Win and Linux. This can be followed by a group effort to hunt for
>> more bugs (here I offer our help).
> I will not be at the hackfest this time, as I simply don't have time
> at the moment. However, I strongly encourage others to take a look at
> the fTools functions and get cracking! Unfortunately I have received
> very few patches or fixes to fTools in general since it's inclusion in
> trunk, and I simply do not have the time to implement these
> changes/fixes on my own. fTools is a very complex plugin, and since it
> is dealing with complicated geometry manipulations, bugs from fTools,
> QGIS, and GEOS (and the conversion between all these pieces) all
> affect it. As I have mentioned in the past, I would love to have more
> people working on it, especially the (very slow) port of the fTools
> Python functions to cpp. I'm not a cpp programmer, so by myself things
> move very slowly... In terms of the hackfest, I would love to have
> someone (or more) take some initiative and continue work on porting
> things over and cleaning things up.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Carson