[Qgis-developer] Re: Working on Symbology Improvement for the GSOC

[Martin Dobias]

Hi Arun

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 3:47 PM, aruntheguy at gmail.com
<aruntheguy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello  all,
>
> Here is a update to the discussion. I have posted a few mockups here <
> http://www.arunmozhi.in/2012/04/a-qgis-symbology-dock-mockup/ > that will
> give a idea of the new UI that I propose. This wouldn't make it completely
> modal-less however.
>
> For some situations like a Line symbol using SVG marker, there will be a
> modal dialog at least to select the SVG symbol. But most cases can be
> handled with just these two tabs.

First of all thank you for the mockups. It is much easier to discuss
GUI ideas with mockups...

Here are my comments:
- I would avoid using two tabs (Library+Editor) and have everything in
one form. Have you seen the mockup I have posted earlier? It is
supposed to integrate the current "symbol selector" dialog and "symbol
properties" dialog and I believe it could be embedded into that dock
widget - to save work and to provide common GUI for users. The dock
widget could work in this way: whenever the user selects a symbol in
legend, the preview would be shown together with general symbol
properties, list of symbol layers and list+tree to pick an existing
symbol from style. When any symbol layer is chosen, symbol properties
should be shown instead.
- style tree with symbol groups and symbols: to me it seems better to
have a tree just listing the hierarchy of groups and a separate list
view with large icons for picking symbols from currently selected
group. You can expect that there may be lots of symbols in groups and
you need a larger preview than the one which would fit into the
preview column.
- the dock widget for symbol properties could be more general - for
example, it would show renderer settings when a vector layer is
selected, or even appearance settings for raster layers (when
selected).
- you mention that for some cases there should be a modal dialog -
e.g. for selection of SVG symbols. It would be good to avoid that -
each symbol layer has a defined widget for setting its properties,
having to define one widget for "big" dialog and another one for dock
widget would be unfortunate. I would suggest to use a dock widget that
can be docked to bottom part of the main window, using more space (and
no tabs!) and therefore diminishing the problems with lack of space.

The deadline for student applications is this Friday! I would like to
urge you to start preparing the application on GSoC website [1]. You
can start now - it is possible to keep updating the application until
the deadline. Mentors from other OSGeo projects may also give you
valuable comments. Write a great proposal, get accepted and have fun
in summer! :-)

[1] http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012

Cheers
Martin