[Qgis-developer] Sextante test drive

[Paolo Cavallini]

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Il 20/04/2013 10:52, Victor Olaya ha scritto:

> I have been thinking about changing all the options dialog. Doesn't
> look hard to do, so you can count on having this ready soon

great, thanks. ready to help if necessary. I still think the appearance of sextante
dialogs do not seem too much in line with QGIS look, so maybe you can ask someone to
help with the GUI.

>    1) The classification of algorithms is done manually...and it is
> boooooring to do :-) SAGA and QGIS ones are already done, but I have
> to do the GRASS ones. However I am not sure about including GRASS, it
> is more complex to use. You can use a SAGA algorithm without knowing
> what SAGA is, but to use a GRASS one, you need to understand some
> GRASS ideas, so it is an advanced process, and the simplified
> algorithm classification shouldn't assume that. You can always change
> to the advanced view to use GRASS (now you can change directly from
> the toolbox, no need to go to the config dialog)

Sorry I do not agree with you:
* most GRASS commands, as they are incorporated into sextante (or in the GRASS
plugin, by that way) are really straightforward to use; in courses people often do
not notice the difference
* more importantly: GRASS is included in most if not all QGIS installation, so you
can rely on it; this is not the same for SAGA
* GRASS modules have a proper manpage, while SAGA is sometimes very hard to understand
* GRASS has a long history and a wide community, so you can trust more on it on the
longer term.
So in short I would not put GRASS as a second class citizen in Sextante ;)

>    2) I would like to have in that list, only those algorithms that
> need no extra configuration, to make that the default and have it
> working out-of the box. That's why R and OTB, for instance, are not in
> there.

Again, do not agree: some OTB commands are very straightforward, and solve problem
people have struggled on for years. The usual effect of showing it is jaw-dropping.
Removing stuff from first sight may have deeper consequences than a clever developer
can foresee, sometimes :)

> good idea. If OTB goes into osgeo4w, I could add the OTB algorithms to
> the simplified list of algorithms

OTB *is* already on osgeo4w - my suggestion (a strong one BTW) is to include it in
the standalone installer for QGIS 2.0

> I still have to send Jurgen the SAGA package as we discussed it in the
> Hackfest. We can put both SAGA and OTB, and taht would really give a
> lot of power to SEXTANTE

Right!
Thanks for your hard work, and good code.
- -- 
Paolo Cavallini - Faunalia
www.faunalia.eu
Full contact details at www.faunalia.eu/pc
Nuovi corsi QGIS e PostGIS: http://www.faunalia.it/calendario
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