[Qgis-developer] SAGA Interface

[Camilo Polymeris]

Hello, Paolo, and thanks for your swift answer.

> Please do: I think this is quite interesting. Please note that Gianluca
> Massei has started some work on this, so he may be able to start
> quicker.

Has Gianluca published his code? I'd like to see his approach and
maybe work together. Mine is at github, BTW, but is completely
unusable right now. Just experiments.

> I think a C++ plugin has limited chances to be successful, because it
> would either require a dependency of QGIS on SAGA, or the recompilation
> of the plugin for each distro. Previous experiences in this direction
> resulted in wonderful plugins used by very few people.
> Python is the way to go IMHO.

I may be wrong, but wouldn't a recompilation of the saga modules and
saga API be necessary either way? Unless you install the full SAGA
package. Even then, I am not sure if saga packages for all distros
include the python bindings. These would have to be generated (SWIG)
and compiled, too.
Anyway, I was thinking more of a low level approach, dynamically
loading the libraries and taking care of data structure exchange,
which means this plugin wouldn't have the same requirements as most.

> I think you should be able to complete the interface at least. Adding
> all the modules may be postponed, if it proves too long. See the
> GdalTools approach for this. Also the GRASS plugin should give you
> insights.

I'll try to identify the most used data structures and formats, see if
there are some I can skip for now. Also I may leave out interactive
modules, if necessary. Just to simplify things in the beginning.

>> GUI: Any ideas? So far I think I'll just clone SAGA's.
>
> I think it would be good if you could follow either the GdalTools or the
> GRASS plugins approach.

I will take a look at that, considering that I have to generate the
interface on-the-fly based on module parameters and input data. I find
specially SAGA's handling of interactive modules a little confusing:
often it is not clear to the user (me, at least) what he is expected
to do next.

One of the difficulties I have faced is generated by SAGA's
documentation. I thought I knew the API more or less well, but this
new project as forced me to use parts I hadn't looked at before.

Well, thanks again for your comments.

Regards,
Camilo