[Qgis-developer] User profiles

[Alister Hood]

> Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:56:47 +0700
> From: Marco Bernasocchi <marco at bernawebdesign.ch>
> To: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] User profiles
> Message-ID: <508758EF.4030207 at bernawebdesign.ch>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> On 10/24/2012 09:53 AM, Alister Hood wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> >> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 18:43:50 +0200
> >> From: Martin Dobias <wonder.sk at gmail.com>
> >> To: Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>
> >> Cc: qgis-developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
> >> Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] User profiles
> >> Message-ID:
> >>         <CAC2XbFfjRANmX52NNoW7KHYPO5uG0H_FhV=P+N70p1yWqnHA2A at mail.gmail.com>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >>
> >> Hi Paolo
> >>
> >> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> >>> Hi all.
> >>> The discussion of this evening brought a nice idea: since we have many
> >>> different types of users, whi not having a "first usage wizard" that
> >>> simply asks the user which profile (s)he prefers, and then starts QGIS
> >>> with only the needed menus and buttons activated? The profiles can be
> >>> easily produced via the customization menu, so this seems trivial to
> >>> implement, and can greatly help first-time users and special interest
> >>> groups.
> >>> Of course we have to have a prominent menu to re-run the wizard, and
> >>> change the choice.
> >>> Opinions?
> >>
> >> I am just afraid that with such profiles the users may forget after a
> >> while they have chosen a "first-time user" profile that disables a lot
> >> of functionality and then users will ask/complain about missing
> >> features...?
> >
> > Yes, I can see why you might want to offer some default "profiles" to control which toolbars and panels are visible, but I don't think it is a good idea to use the customisation feature to hide any functionality.
> >
> can you elaborate on why?

Here is my train of thought:

If there was a system of different profiles, I imagine they should be task oriented, e.g. "raster analysis" or "hydrological modelling" (rather than "view", "edit" and "analyse" or "beginner", "expert" and "master of the known universe").

If the profiles used the "customisation" mechanism, they would not just control which toolbars and panels are on or off by default, they would control which toolbars are actually visible in the right-click menu and able to be turned on or off there.
As well as hiding toolbars and panels, it is natural that specific menu entries and toolbar buttons would be hidden in each profile, and when a user needed a specific feature they would need to switch through several profiles looking to see if it existed, or alternatively look for it in the customisation dialog and enable it there (which would kind of defeat the purpose of the profiles).  Essentially the hidden features would be a lot less discoverable.

How would the default profiles work with user customisations (including the user simply turning a toolbar on or off)?  When a user switches to a different profile, would their own customisations be automatically saved to the first profile?  Would they be prompted to save the changes to a new custom profile?  Is this complication really necessary?

If the menus are organised into a nice logical hierarchy (as they should be), shouldn't it be easy for people to find the features they need, and shouldn't there be no need to hide features to protect people from them, because people naturally won't go into the parts of the menu that contain the features they don't need?

Does QGIS really need a system of standard profiles?  Will that actually address the things that are bothering people?  Or are other fixes or improvements required to address these?
e.g.:
- make the "customisation" feature actually capable of hiding buttons in the plugin toolbar.
- make "customisations" apply without a restart (I presume this already works on systems, otherwise I don't know what the "apply" button would be for).
- make it possible for users to create extra toolbars, and even drag-and-drop buttons between different toolbars.
- gui cleanups like the famous unified add layer dialog.