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

[Etienne Tourigny]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 5:04 AM, Nathan Woodrow <madmanwoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I'm glad others see this as useful!

Any idea when these changes will be available, and if should I wait
before adding my changes to master? In the meantime, I could perhaps
push what I have done.
Currently, the button changes the selected symbol, but it could be
modified to open the symbol lists. I just thought this way was a bit
faster.

>
> 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?

I like the idea of multiple templates to choose from, but I would
still like a way to change the global defaults (see answer to Denis).

Any idea on how to manage the template list from a UI perspective?
Just have a file sector and have the user place/save the files there,
and then a dynamic menu which lists these files?

- Etienne


>
> - 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
>>
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