[Qgis-developer] Print composer changes: several side-effects

[Olivier Dalang]

Hi !

Those change appear because some properties have been added and some
removed to make the UI and the code more consistent (removing
duplicate border color settings for Shape item, for instance).
Upon opening an old project, the added properties will be set to
default, while the duplicate one will take the old unused property.

I'd say there's no easy way to avoid such side-effects (without coding
some dirty compatibility code). One way to handle such changes would
be to implement a kind of "old version file converter" to allow
backwards compatibility without making the code too complex.

But I'm not sure that if it's worth it. A general rule in software
usage is to keep the same version of the software throughout a
project, an to use new versions only when starting new projects.


However, it is possible to discuss if which composer items should have
a background and/or frame by default. (in your case, this could change
whether composer items should have a background by default)

For now, I think all the composer items have a white background and no
frame by default, excepted the ComposerShape which has also a frame.


Olivier



2013/2/20 Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net>:
> Hi,
>
> With the recent modifications in print composer, while I agree that the UI
> has much improved, there are unfortunately also some side-effects. Here are
> two problems I have detected:
>
> * legend boxes which had a white background now have a transparent
> background
> * Basic shapes (like rects, ellipses, triangles) that had a black border now
> have either no border or a white border
>
> For organizations like us, with a lot of QGIS projects with a lot of
> different layouts, this is quite annoying if we have to manually change each
> of the projects.
>
> But I am also aware that we are using master / unstable and that there are
> modifications. I can live with such changes but I assume that other users
> will have similar problems if backwards compatibility breaks.
>
> Just to let you know - thanks for the improvements in the UI!
>
> Andreas
>
> --
> --
> Andreas Neumann
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> Switzerland
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