[Qgis-developer] Improving ftools geoprocessing tools

[Matthias Kuhn]

Hi João,

Nice that there is interest in improving the analysis part of QGIS.

There was recently a similar discussion with Bernhard Ströbl who also
put some effort into improving the dissolve tool (although it turned out
to be complex and will probably only be merged in 2.14).

In the discussion there, the need for coexistence of these two suits
offering the same tools was questioned. In particular, maintaining twice
the same tool in QGIS is an extra effort in maintenance and there is no
advantage visible.

It would be nice to plan how to resolv this situation, in particular
could you answer the following questions:

 * Why is the processing toolbox not an option for your users? (Do you
require shortcuts (menu entries) to the tools? Is it the parameter
interface which is more fine-tuned? Missing functionality?)
 * Are the processing toolbox tools enough performant for your needs? If
not, which ones require attention? It would be good to have a list.

If the first one is a problem, I think it would be an approach to let
system administrators define "favorite algorithms" (or similar) which
would then be offered as a shortcut in the menu.

If the second one applies, then we already have proven the point that
maintaining the same algorithm twice is silly and the effort should
rather be put into unifying these tools instead of rewriting duplicate
code. I will probably soon be working on a test suite for processing
which should ensure long-term quality assurance for the algorithms
there. Another advantage of consolidating the two code bases.

I hope that it's possible for your company to consider different
approaches for this problem to get to a long-term enhancement.

Best regards,
Matthias


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