[Qgis-developer] New latlontools plugin

Fri Jun 10 03:06:12 PDT 2016

Hi

Just to echo what Régis is saying Calvin, as the original author of the coordinate capture plugin shipped with QGIS, your changes would probably be quite simple to add to the core plugin. I am actually planning to merge the coordinate capture tool into the status bar coordinates widget in QGIS 3.0 so it would be good to get your suggestions so that we actually don’t need to have a bunch of different plugins for this.

Regards

Tim

> On 10 Jun 2016, at 10:18, Régis Haubourg <regis.haubourg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Calvin, 
> you made a great comparing existing tools for coordinate handling. I was annoyed too with that mess. Could you make a feature request in hub.qgis.org <http://hub.qgis.org/> asking for more rational in core QGIS ? I imagine that we could just have some tweaking of current coordinate widget so that it can have different formatting options, and have all addintional tools being merged to only one, handling all use cases.  making one more plugin is the right short term option to meet your actual need (plugins are great for that). Toavoiding too much efforts in maitaining those plugins, and also avoid plugin clutering, a feature request is the right thing to do :)
> Cheers
> Régis
> 
> 2016-06-09 21:48 GMT+02:00 C Hamilton <adenaculture at gmail.com <mailto:adenaculture at gmail.com>>:
> I just uploaded my latlontools plugin to the QGIS plugin site. I know it is going to need some explanation as it duplicates some existing functionality, but it was born out of frustration with the existing plugins. Let me clarify that I am not saying there is anything wrong with how these plugins work. They may be perfectly suited for the needs of their users, but my work flow was such that they did not satisfy my needs and even the time I spent in writing the plugin was well worth the time I saved later with my work flow. LatLonTools is designed to work in conjunction with Google Maps and other on-line mapping.
>  
> The plugins that LatLonTools has the most similarity with are Coordinate Capture, Copy_Coords, and ZoomToCoordinates, and Zoom to Point.
>  
> The reason I wrote LatLonTools was because I was looking at archaeological sites in Lidar hill shade and was comparing what I was viewing in QGIS with imagery in Google Map, Google Earth, and some other mapping tools. I was also working with coordinates in Wikipedia. All of these represent coordinates as geographic latitude and longitudes either in decimal or DMS notation. They all specify latitude followed by longitude usually with a comma separator. LatLonTools uses latitude and longitude coordinates no matter what the CRS of the QGIS project is - hence the name LatLonTools. It was also important to be able to copy the coordinates verbatim usually in the format "latitude, longitude" with slight variations and paste them into my plugin in one text field (not two) and zoom to that point. Conversely I wanted a single click in QGIS to copy a coordinate that I could paste in Google Maps or Google Earth and zoom to that point. For my use this is the problem with the existing plugins:
>  
> Zoom to Point:
> 1. Does not support DMS coordinates.
> 2. Has separate text fields for entering coordinates.
> 3. Requires coordinates in the CRS of the QGIS project and this may not be in degrees.
>  
> Zoom to Coordinates
> 1. Does not support DMS coordinates.
> 2. Has separate text fields for entering coordinates.
> 3. Requires coordinates in the CRS of the QGIS project and this may not be in degrees.
> 4. Not dockable.
>  
> Coordinate Capture
> Although I have listed this one, it really doesn't compare to LatLonTools because LatLonTools only captures to the clipboard so I am going to rule it out as a similar plugin.
> 1. Does not support DMS notation.
> 2. Can capture the coordinate to the clipboard but it is in the format of  "Longitude, Latitude, Native CRS X, Native CRS Y" and is not suitable to paste into Google Earth.
> 3. Even if you could click on the Capture button to get the right coordinate you still have an extra click. With LatLonTools you only need to click on the map and the coordinate is captured to the clipboard in the right format for Google Earth.
>  
> Copy_Coords
> 1. Copies the coordinate in the format of "Longitude, Latitude" or in the native CRS of "X, Y". This is not suitable to paste into Google Earth.
> 2. Does not support DMS notation.
> 3. Does not give any indication to the user that the coordinate was captured.
> 4. If the CRS is anything other than 4326 the output will not be in degrees.
>  
> The major difference with LatLonTools is that it assumes degrees as input and output no matter what the project CRS is and it formats them in the order of on-line maps. Here is what LatLonTools offers:
>  
> 1. Has a single string input of "Latitude, Longitude". Actually, the delimiter can be one or more comma, space, tab, semicolon, or colon. Note that with a tab you can paste the coordinates into a spread sheet in adjacent columns.
> 2. Supports DMS on input and output.
> 3. Single click coordinate capture in the proper format for on-line maps.
> 4. Displays the coordinate in the lower left as the mouse moves over the map.
> 5. In settings you can configure the capture format as decimal degrees, DMS, DDMMSS or even the Native CRS, but will be in the order Y,X or Latitude, Longitude.
> 6. In settings you can specify the delimiter between the two coordinates as a comma, tab, space or anything you want.
> 7. Two tools in one plugin.
> 8. I may add an additional capability to paste in a block of coordinates that create a list to click on and view.
> 9. Input is in a dockable window which I prefer to a popup window.
>  
> For anyone who uses QGIS in conjunction with Google Earth, Google Maps or the like are really going to appreciate LatLonTools.
>  
> My goal was not to duplicate the work flow of the similar plugins, but to optimize my work flow, but there are several easy modifications that I could make in the "Settings" so that it could operate in the same manner as 3 of the plugins. I would only do this if the community wanted it, because I would never work with coordinates the way they do. LatLonTools will only have a single string as input so if the other plugins want two input text boxes then there is no overlap. In the "Settings" it would be easy to support coordinates is in the order of "X, Y" like the other plugins for those who need that ordering. And in the settings I could also provide an option for Native CRS input if others were interested.
>  
> I know this has been an incredibly long e-mail, but wanted to lay out the reasons for this plugin and am requesting that you consider adding it to the plugin repository. The plugin will likely expand with a bulk zoom to point feature.
>  
> Thanks,
> 
> Calvin
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Régis Haubourg
> 
> Attention, changement d'adresse mail! 
> Mon adresse principale devient désormais regis.haubourg at gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>
> 
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---

Tim Sutton
QGIS Project Steering Committee Chair
tim at qgis.org

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