[Qgis-developer] Remaining work to get rid of old labeling?

[Andreas Neumann]

 Hi Larry,

 Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I think that 
 http://hub.qgis.org/wiki/quantum-gis/New_Labeling_changes_and_roadmap is 
 a very good list to see the progress and what unimplemented ideas are in 
 the pipeline.

 I think the most important things are:

 * improve perfomance of the label drawing
 * make sure that text can stay as text (if possible with reasonable 
 effort)
 * and that the buffers can be drawn with reasonable speed
 * removal of old labeling GUI

 All the other stuff can be done after 2.0 - but the above things should 
 be fixed if possible.

 Do you have estimates how much dev time the above 4 points would need?
 Do you think that you can fix these 4 issues until feature freeze?

 Can the PSC please decide whether we can fund this work from the QGIS 
 account? As to my knowledge we have a reasonable amount of money in our 
 bank account that we should use to fix the most important issues for 
 QGIS 2.0.

 Thanks,
 Andreas

 On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:24:04 -0700, Larry Shaffer wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
>
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:28 AM, Andreas Neumann 
> <a.neumann at carto.net> wrote:
>> Hi Larry, Hi all,
>>
>> At the Essen developer meeting we discussed that we want to get rid 
>> of
>> the double versions (labeling, symbology, diagrams - more?)
>>
>> The new diagram are now in good shape thanks to the work of Matthias
>> Kuhn and Marco Hugentobler.
>>
>> I now that Larry did a tremendous amount of work on the new label
>> engine, next to the work Marco H. and Martin Dobias did before.
>>
>> I don't have the exact overview what features from the old engine 
>> are
>> not yet present in the new engine.
>>
>> In Essen we proposed that we ask Larry to continue his work to get 
>> rid
>> of the old label engine - and we proposed that we would pay a 
>> certain
>> amount of our funds to Larry for this work.
>>
>> Question to Larry and the PSC? What is the status of this work? Was
>> there any agreement so far between the PSC and Larry to fund his 
>> work?
>> Larry - would you have time to continue working on it so we can get 
>> rid
>> of the old labeling?
>
> There are two lists you can reference on the wiki (both of which I
> updated, or reorganized a bit, this morning)[0][1]. Neither of the
> lists speaks directly to what exactly needs done to remove the old
> labeling.
>
> There is at least one major issue remaining (that I know of):
>
> Label text should be preserved as text in output (regression) - This
> issue also possibly relates to the slower performance many users are
> seeing between the old labeling and new. Dr. Marco H. mentioned he
> thinks the older method using QPainter::drawText() might be faster
> than the current QPainterPath::addText() method. However, I'm not 
> sure
> all new features can be done using the older method. Regardless, 
> using
> a different method where possible, one that outputs text as text,
> would be very beneficial when using the resultant SVG or PDF output 
> in
> other applications. Users currently rely upon the old engine for that
> purpose.
>
> I am not sure if any other QGIS functionality still uses the old
> labeling engine. Even so, at least updating the new engine's features
> to the point of removing the old engine's gui should be a priority;
> while removing the old labeling engine code could be done later.
>
> Regarding any funding, beyond the noted issue above, you might want 
> to
> review list at [1] for candidates on what you would specifically like
> to see in version 2.0. The new end-of-December feature freeze means I
> have to start paring that list down.
>
> [0]
> 
> http://hub.qgis.org/wiki/quantum-gis/Switching_from_Old_to_New_Symbology_and_Labeling#Labeling
> [1] 
> http://hub.qgis.org/wiki/quantum-gis/New_Labeling_changes_and_roadmap
>
> Regards,
>
> Larry Shaffer
> Dakota Cartography
> Black Hills, South Dakota
>
>> Thanks for an update on it.
>>
>> Andreas

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 Andreas Neumann
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 8624 Grüt (Gossau ZH)
 Switzerland