[QGIS-Developer] Profile plugins

Tue Aug 27 01:54:41 PDT 2019

Hi Paolo:

(Current maintainers of ProfileTool here.)

I agree with you that having multiple plugins for the same task (given 
the limited resources available) seems far from an ideal situation, and 
would be glad to collaborate with other developers to join forces in a 
unified solution.

I am not aware of the situation of the other plugins at the moment, (we 
checked on both "VoGIS Profile Tool" and "qProf" and decided to work on 
Profile Tool when we had to make a choice), but here goes my status 
report on Profile Tool codebase/functionality/documentation/support. It 
would be nice if we could get a feature list from the other plugins, see 
what is missing/what users find important in every plugin, and trace a 
'unification routemap' from there.

Codebase:

-We made quite a refactoring effort during migration to QGis 3 to keep 
ui and calculations mostly separated. There are still some minor changes 
to do, but we are close to get there.

-We have no unit tests, and this is something that should be worked on.

-Some parts of the code would appreciate a little love to use more 
pythonic/dry constructions.

-We got rid of most of the stability issues (crashes and python errors), 
though some may still remain.

Functionality:

-Profile plotted along an interactively defined path, a polyline 
selected interactively or a vector layer.

-Elevation information can be taken from raster and mesh layers. 
Multiple layers can be added to obtain several profiles simultaneously.

-Profile can show height (i.e. the raster value), or slope (in % or deg)

-Profile can be sampled all along the input line or only on specified 
input points.

-Profiles can be exported as an image with axes, labels etc in png or 
svg format, and as a 3D polyline / 2D profile on dxf format (using 
pyqtgraph backend) and also PDF and PostScript when using Matplotlib.

-Profile can be exported in text/csv format (on the table tab).

-This is experimental and not documented, but thanks to refactoring 
ProfileTool can be controlled from another plugin/algorithm, feeding 
points programatically to create a 'live' profile.

-Supports PyQtGraph or Matplotlib backend (not really sure on why there 
is a need to support both backends).

-GUI feels a bit crowded, with many controls and tabs, I think that we 
can do better.

Documentation

-No user manual, there are however some tutorials available on blogs, 
webs, etc.

-Not much code documentation.

Support:

-We are currently on maintenance mode, fixing bugs and making minor 
modifications/adding small features when possible, but we have less time 
and resources to work on this than we would like. Next year we may be 
able to put some more work on it.

Regards,

Javier

El 27/08/2019 a las 9:20, Paolo Cavallini escribió:
> Dear developers of profile plugins,
> as you know, we do our best to keep the plugin repository tidy and
> clean, to reduce duplication which is confusing for the users and makes
> management and maintenance more difficult. With >1,000 plugins now, this
> is a necessity more than a choice.
> A suggestion from Calvin[0] in the qgis-dev mailing list pushed me to
> approach you again, to check together the opportunities to improve the
> current situation. I would be grateful if you could take the time to
> check his suggestions and discuss together the way to come up with a
> beautiful, unified plugin. I know this is extra work for you, and that
> everybody tends to like his own solutions, but the gains from having an
> unified solutions are great from all points of view.
> Looking forward for your suggestions.
> Cheers.
>
> [0]
>> I don't consider "Profile Tool" to be perfect, but I find it useful to
>> generate cross sections on DEMS. There are 4 plugins that create
>> profiles, but I would say that "Profile Tool" is the easiest to use. The
>> plugin "Temporal/Spectral Profile Tool" probably should not have been
>> accepted as a QGIS plugin because it is a modified version of the
>> Profile Tool. I can't get it to work. That author should have worked
>> with the Profile Tool author to make a better plugin. VoGIS Profile Tool
>> is also very similar. qProf seems to be a little more advanced.
>> Ultimately, it would be nice to merge all 4 into one tool.
-- 

Javier Becerra Elcinto

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