[Qgis-developer] Future of OpenLayers plugin - time to deprecate?

Pirmin Kalberer pi_ml at sourcepole.com
Wed Jun 15 09:58:28 PDT 2016


Hi all,

Am Mittwoch, 15. Juni 2016, 08.20:13 schrieb Richard Duivenvoorde:
> Maybe first discuss with Author (in cc)?

Thanks Richard. Today was the 7th annual Swiss QGIS User meeting and therefore 
no time to answer to this second shit storm wave earlier.

First some history for QGIS newbies:
The OpenLayers plugin was presented at the first QGIS User meeting six years 
ago [1]. It was built to integrate Google Maps layers using the Google API via 
OpenLayers. At this time only the illegal (but well known) way using a GDAL 
VRT supported this functionality. In the meantime there have been at least 
three plugins reimplementing this illegal TMS access method, the latest (and 
best) is QuickMapServices. The OpenLayers plugin got the first major breakage 
with the QGIS 2.0 API change. The multithreaded rendering in QGIS 2.4 caused a 
complete rewrite of the plugin. Between and after that other QGIS or Google 
Maps changes have broken the OpenLayers plugin from time to time and it was a 
matter of course that we "fix" it to adapt these (usually paid) changes.

I personally don't think that the name of this or another plugin is the main 
reason for more than 700'000 downloads of the OpenLayers plugin. I know of 
quite a few users staying with old QGIS version (even 1.x) just to be able to 
display and print Google Maps base layers. For some of them the plugin was 
important enough, to pay a few hundred Swiss Francs for another "bug fix". 
Apart of this, OpenLayers was always done in my limited spare time at home or 
at hackfests (travelling sponsored by Sourcepole). Even when I pointed at a 
possible breakages of PluginLayers, like before merging the map rotation 
feature, it seemed never to have any priority to test a change with the OL 
plugin or even preventing to break it. This attitude and the destructive 
Trump-syle tone with the +1 frency in this community mailing list are 
definitely not the motivation I would need for another bug fix. And regarding 
the reputation of QGIS, I find promoting a plugin for doing  illegal things 
worse than not fixing printing problems.

Enough of getting my frustration out - I have also a constructive proposal: 
Please pass a customRenderFlag during composer rendering to give PluginLayers 
a chance to handle this case without adventurous workarounds (and besides make 
it possible to fix WMTS printing with more than 90dpi's). I would then at least 
turn off OL layers and display a message.

Regards
Pirmin

-- 
Pirmin Kalberer - @PirminKalberer
Sourcepole - http://www.sourcepole.com

[1] http://blog.sourcepole.com/2010/04/23/folien-qgis-user-meeting-bern/

> 
> As the maintainers used to put a lot of work into the plugin. In my view
> it is not very polite to retract/depricate a plugin.
> 
> Best I think would be (if Pirmin and Matthias are ok with it), to
> temporarily depricate it, AND show with a message in the description
> that there is a working alternative.
> This would give SP time to fix, without time pressure.
> 
> Unless off course the Plugin is being depricated by the authors too....
> Then it could just be removed.
> 
> Maybe we should have a mechanisme in the plugins to do such messages?
> For example: "This plugins is not working properly because.... (eg
> Webkit/Debian)" or "This plugin is deprecated in favour of ..."?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Richard Duivenvoorde
> 
> On 14-06-16 23:04, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> > Makes sense to me. Going to deprecate it tomorrow if nobody objects.
> > Thanks Nyall.
> > 
> > Il 14 giugno 2016 22:25:06 CEST, Anita Graser <anitagraser at gmx.at> ha
> > 
> > scritto:
> >     On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Nyall Dawson
> >     
> >     <nyall.dawson at gmail.com <mailto:nyall.dawson at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >         On 31 Dec 2015 7:33 AM, "Nyall Dawson" <nyall.dawson at gmail.com
> >         
> >         <mailto:nyall.dawson at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >         > Hi all,
> >         > 
> >         > The email chain below is just one example of a user who has
> >         > issues
> >         > with QGIS after installing the OpenLayers plugin. Stackexchange
> >         > is
> >         > filled with similar examples (See
> >         > http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/qgis-openlayers-pl
> >         > ugin).
> >         > 
> >         > I'm wondering if it's time we discussed the future of this
> >         > plugin. Now
> >         > that we have a viable replacement (Quick Map Services) which
> >         > doesn't
> >         > demonstrate these issues, should we deprecate the OpenLayers
> >         > plugin
> >         > and remove it from the plugin repo?
> >         
> >         Can we revisit this discussion again?
> >         
> >         I'm very much in favour of:
> >         1. Removing openlayers plugin from the repo asap. This plugin is
> >         broken and unfortunately is harming the reputation of the
> >         project, as many users cannot distinguish the difference between
> >         the plugin's issues and problems with QGIS itself (eg see
> >         https://twitter.com/thatkindofplace/status/742543174573260800?s=03
> >         )
> >         
> >         2. Rename QuickMapServices as "QuickMapServices (OpenLayers
> >         replacement)" on the plugin repo, so users looking for
> >         openlayers are nicely directed to the new plugin
> >     
> >     ​+1 for all the reasons above.
> >     
> >     Thanks for reviving this Nyall!
> >     
> >     Best wishes,
> >     Anita​
> >     
> >     
> >     ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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