[Qgis-developer] QBrowser & Customization

[Nathan Woodrow]

For what it's worth, my opinion on B1) is we should have icons.  Good UI is
important and icons help the user relate to items quicker more so then just
a plain text based tree.

- Nathan

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:23 PM, Radim Blazek <radim.blazek at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
> we are ready (Martin Dobias and me) to merge browser-and-customization
> branch to master.
>
> You can get idea about features in that branch from some snapshots:
> https://picasaweb.google.com/radim.blazek/QGISCustomizationQBrowser
>
> Briefly for people who were not present at last HF:
>
> Customization support allows users to disable (hide) parts of QGIS UI.
> You can see example of minimal (maximal)  customization of version 1.7
> on the first snapshot. It is possible to disable almost any element of
> UI: menus, sub menus, toolbars, tools, parts of dialogs, docked
> windows and status bar items. UI elements can be switched on/off
> either in tree (second snapshot) or interactively in QGIS application
> using customization select tool and clicking on UI elements.
> Customization is saved in separate settings and can be saved/loaded
> to/from file. There is also support for customized packages. If
> customization file is included in installation package, it is loaded
> the first time QGIS is started.
>
> The QBrowser is intended to be a geographic data resources browser and
> manager. Now it is implemented as a stand alone application but we
> would like to include it also in QGIS as alternative 'Add layer'
> dialog. Currently it is supported only by ogr, gdal and wms providers.
> At this moment QBrowser allows you to browse file system (where it
> identifies known geographic data) and defined WMS servers (shared with
> QGIS). If you select a layer you can view its metadata, preview and
> attributes (for vectors). It is possible to assign CRS to a layer (if
> supported by provider), create a new shapefile and manage WMS servers.
>
>
> We would like to discuss some issues with other developers before the
> merge:
>
> QBrowser:
>
> A1) All the data format specific functionality is implemented in
> providers. Each provider which wants to show his data in browser must
> implement 2 additional functions:
>    QGISEXTERN int dataCapabilities ()
>    QGISEXTERN QgsDataItem * dataItem ( QString thePath, QgsDataItem*
> parentItem )
> The dataCapabilities function says what kind of data is supported
> (File,Dir,Database,Net) so that e.g. WMS provider is not called on
> files or dirs. The dataItem() function returns QgsDataItem
> representing either known geographic resources for given file system
> path (gdal, ogr) or top level item (wms). It is important to design
> providers interface well, because it may be implemented also by custom
> providers and we cannot change it easily in future (after release).
> Please look at the QgsDataItem and its children methods and
> implementation.
>
> A2) To get access from QBrowser to QgsWMSSourceSelect  via
> QgsDataItem, we had to move QgsWMSSourceSelect to wms provider. That
> is beginning of providers specific UI migration to providers, which
> has been discussed already before and generally accepted. To get
> select widget from main application we added in WMS provider another
> function:
>    QGISEXTERN QgsWMSSourceSelect * selectWidget( QWidget * parent,
> Qt::WFlags fl )
> Currently it is more or less a hack for QgisApp::addWmsLayer(). We
> should probably define some QgsSelect either with methods returning
> URI or better signals for add new layer. Currently it is using
> signals, because WMS selector can add more layers.
>
> Customization:
>
> B1) The customization dialog tree is using Qt designer icons for
> various widgets. It looks nice but it adds 192K to QGIS package. Is it
> acceptable or do you prefer tree without icons?
>
> B2) For dialogs, the interactive customization select tool can only be
> activated by shortcut (because the dialogs are modal) which has to be
> defined for main application. We have used Ctrl+M because it is not
> yet used and M is close to right Ctrl. May be we should spare such a
> good key for better occasion?
>
> Please let us know your opinion or objections.
>
> Radim
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