[Qgis-developer] QGIS - French Ministry of Environment

[MORREALE Jean Roc]

Hi Andreas,

I'm following trunk (svn junkie) so during this meeting I've shown up 
the label properties panel and it was appreciated but this is not the 
excepted functionnality. These "annotations" are text objects and do not 
derivate from an attribute, the user can manualy modify their font size, 
their oritentation, etc. It is a feature available in MapInfo (ArcGIS 
too) and users are expecting it. This isn't the best way to label a map 
but even with the huge improvements brough by PAL/labelv2 (even if it 
isn't ready to replace the old yet), manual editing is often required to 
get a correct output.

The development done by the MEEDDM was a way for some technical persons 
to get their hands into the PyQGIS API and a mean to know how easy it 
would be to make these changes. They want a deskop GIS that can evolve 
and can be modified, both things MapInfo isn't. Further works will be 
coordinated with the community as there is a real will to mutualize the 
work. If everything goes well, you will soon see new names on this list.

For notice, at first they estimated the time needed for first OpenWOR 
version to 30 days, it turned out that 7 days were enough...

Regards,
Jean Roc

Le 26/09/2010 22:15, Andreas Neumann a écrit :
> Hi Jean,
>
> Thank you for this interesting information. I understand that the
> decision is still pending but that there is a positive attitude towards
> QGIS.
>
> As far as labeling/annotation features, there had been recent
> improvements in the trunk. And there will be more. This work is funded
> from the cities of Uster and Thun in Switzerland. The recent
> improvements are around data-defined text properties (font-family, size,
> color, rotation, offsets (vertical and horizontal), etc) - basically
> porting the old data-defined settings to the new label engine.
>
> Marco will also soon start work on manual label placement with the
> option of having different anchor points (aligned with the Swiss
> Interlis text placement). This would potentially also be useful for MEEDDM.
>
> Are you aware that annotations also exist in newer QGIS versions? This
> was funded by the Kanton of Solothurn. I don't know if the current
> annotations satisfy your needs, but it is worth exploring. The
> annotations as they are implemented currently are stored in the project
> file, not in a separate layer. You probably want the annotation layer
> type - but I think that this will be covered by the work mentioned in
> the paragraph above. Please let us know your requirements regarding
> labeling/annotation - Marco is currently working on them, and maybe your
> requirements could be taken care of at the same time.
>
> The Swiss QGIS users are coordinating QGIS development and sharing the
> funding efforts as well. We collaborate with the companies Sourcepole
> (Marco Hugentobler, Pirmin Kalberer) and Norbit (Jürgen Fischer). If you
> are interested, we can also do more international
> collaboration/coordination. Of course a lot of issues could be discussed
> on the mailinglists, but there could be meetings as well, maybe also at
> an upcoming Hackfest, or separate.
>
> In my opinion, new features can be included quite fast into QGIS, if
> funding/financing can be organized. Often faster than with commercial
> software. Some coordination should be done to avoid double or triple
> efforts (same feature developed several times by different parties) and
> to maximize the benefits from the financial contributions.
>
> Please keep us informed about the upcoming decision/plans of MEEDDM.
>
> Andreas
>
> On 9/26/10 2:27 PM, MORREALE Jean Roc wrote:
>> Hi, here is a very short resume of a QGIS party that was organized a few
>> days ago by the French Ministry of Environment (MEEDDM [1]) to exchange
>> informations on Quantum GIS, in order to determine the possibility of
>> its use as one of their GIS desktop tools. Most of the participants were
>> technical members of the ministry and its local branches, and Vincent
>> Picavet (OSGEO-fr treasurer) and I (OSGEO-fr/QGIS).
>>
>> QGIS is being used internally for months by some of their agents or
>> departments in parallel with the actual official tool, which is MapInfo.
>> The ministry is ongoing a rationalization of their actual software base,
>> leading to the adoption of web gis and the study of alternative desktop
>> tools, namely QGIS. This ministry has already switched to OpenOffice and
>> changed their Access databases to PostGIS.
>>
>> No decision has been taken yet but the general opinion on QGIS was
>> positive, the ministry's technical teams have already produced
>> documentation set for their internal formations and are conducting use
>> tests with several services. The main point was to determine if QGIS was
>> able to fulfill 100% of MapInfo's uses and the answer was mixed : no on
>> some aspects (no "font/annotation" layer type, different proportional
>> symbols aka #960, etc.) and far more on others (labelv2, symbology, sql,
>> etc.).
>>
>> Several tests were also done to determine the effort needed to customize
>> QGIS, and two tools were developed :
>> - SelectPlusFr, a plugin based on Barry ROWLINGSON's SelectPlus
>> extending the selection tools
>> - OpenWOR, a plugin which allows to partly open .wor file in QGIS (I'll
>> post more on that later)
>>
>> A decision on migrating part of the software base is still to be
>> discussed, but the technical team of the ministry already intends to
>> contribute code (aforementioned plugins at least) and would like to
>> provide financial support to QGIS in some way.
>>
>> Regards,
>> MORREALE Jean Roc
>>
>> [1] http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/
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