[Qgis-developer] Discussion on browser and file extensions

[Etienne Tourigny]

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 4:10 AM, Giovanni Manghi
<giovanni.manghi at faunalia.pt> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> I think the discussion on http://hub.qgis.org/issues/5621 deserves more general
>> discussion on this ML. Opinions? Could reporters make a short resume for us?
>

I guess the consesus in the issue is that the browser should display
extension names, and that there should be an *optional* indication in
the legends layer as to the provenance.

However, any other display/tool (drop to DB manager and PG/spatialite
in browser) should not use the extension.

It was also mentioned that drop from browser should be consistent with
"Add Layers" dialog (and also from the commandline). It is not
currently in the case of vector layers.

These alternatives have been presented, perhaps needing a user option:

1) Always adding the extension and stripping it where necessary
2) Never adding the extension and adding it in the legend
3) Never adding the extension
4) the legend could have an optional (for experts) additional column
with data source format.

1) and 2) deal more with a technical aspect in that the display name
is set in QgsDataItem (by the QgsDirectoryItem in the browser case),
so selectively changing that name based on the destination requires
some consideration on the source (probably the uri + provider would be
sufficient).

Consensus on having the extension in the browser means that the
QgsDataItem name must have the extension, but this must be removed
when doing most D&D operations, which means more complexity.
The alternative is to add the extension in the Browser (and possibly
legend) based on the URI or perhaps a new member variable.

Radim's solution to have an additional column specifying the
datasource format (TIF, SHP, PG, etc.) is interesting, but might add
clutter?



>
> I originally asked to avoid leave the extension while dragging and
> dropping from the browser, mainly because when dropping into DB Manager
> it is annoying to have to manually remove that ".shp" (example) from the
> suggested table name.
>
> On the other hand seeing the datatype in the TOC is useful and a thing
> that many users have asked in the past.
>
> Real life projects tend to be large, with many layers from many
> datasources/types. Vectors are not just vectors, and rasters are not
> just rasters: there are vectors that cannot be edited (lack of
> permission or because gdal does not allow it), layers that cannot be
> used as input by standard qgis tools (GRASS rasters), etc.
>
> Sometimes the users have even layers with the same name but of different
> type.
>
> So, seeing the format in the TOC is a step forward in usability, and in
> the ticket were suggested a few ways to get it.
>
> cheers!
>
> -- Giovanni --
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-developer mailing list
> Qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer