[Qgis-developer] user-defined symbology defaults + project templates

[Nathan Woodrow]

Hey Etienne,

I like the ideas but I do some have some comments on the
implementation from a UI point of view.  I like being able to set the
default symbols for a project, that will come in very handy.  What I
would do here however is have a button with a icon and text rather
than a combobox.  The button would open the symbol selector and let
the user select a symbol.  We are redoing the symbol manager and
symbol selector in the current GSoC, so I think the new version will
work well here. The new symbol manager allows for grouping and
searching so you wouldn't have to scroll though a massive list of
symbols.

For the templates thing I think that is a great idea however maybe we
can expand it a bit more and make it more flexible. What I think we
could do is rather then having a single default temple we could have a
template search path/s and give the user a list of .qgs files in these
folders.  To handle this in the UI I would have New Project From
Temple... menu item that has a sub menu listing all the templates, if
would also add a drop down menu to the New Project toolbar button to
let people select the template from the toolbar.

Thoughts?

- Nathan

On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 7:10 AM, Etienne Tourigny
<etourigny.dev at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There are 2 interrelated topics that I have been thinking about and
> have come up with a solution, and I would like to get other's feedback
> before proceeding further.
>
> 1) Default symbol styles are not user configurable - for example new
> polygons are always filled with a random color, new point symbols are
> always small red dots, etc.
>
> I see 2 ways to change this - either global or project based. I think
> project based is better because defaults in a given project are
> probably not best for all projects.
>
> So I have implemented the interface and back-end to select default
> symbology (point, line, polygon) and color ramps for a project, and
> all new symbols have identical properties.
> See attached screenshot for an idea. Should probably also add options
> for rasters (i.e. what's already in the prefs, plus default renderer
> style).
>
> 2) New project defaults may not be ideal for all users - see
> background discussion below which deals with default composer
> templates.
>
> A solution to this is to have a default project (template) which is
> loaded when a new project is created. My solution allows to select the
> default project template and also adds a UI to load a "blank" project.
> I realize this may cause some problems, but it's nicer than to have to
> manually load a project "template" after creating a new project (or
> opening qgis for the first time).
>
> This, combined with the symbology defaults, means that a user can
> define his personal symbology defaults and have them always loaded
> when a new project is created.
>
> Any ideas/comments?
>
> Etienne
>
> Background discussion:
> http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/2012-June/017443.html
>
> My branch which implements solutions for these 2 issues:
> https://github.com/etiennesky/Quantum-GIS/tree/symbology-default
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-developer mailing list
> Qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>