[QGIS-Developer] QGIS 4.0 - let's start some early discussions!

[james at shaeffer.co]

+1 for this.

 

--

James

 

From: QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of C Hamilton
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2019 9:16 AM
To: Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>
Cc: qgis-developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS 4.0 - let's start some early discussions!

 

Let me share my experience with the jump from QGIS 2 to QGIS 3. I have been trying to get QGIS used by the US Government and make it an option rather than just relying on ESRI. This has been very difficult but I was making progress. I had offices that were primarily using QGIS and who were developing scripts to handle their work flow. When QGIS 3 came out they got so frustrated with the lack of documentation and the complete break of the API, with no program that would take their scripts and make them QGIS 3 compatible, that they completely abandoned QGIS and went back to ESRI. Despite the fact that I love QGIS 3 and think it is better than QGIS 2, I find there is now less interest in using QGIS. I have less customers then I used to have and it will probably take at least another year or two to get back to where I was at.

 

I know that as developers we want to continue to improve the code, add new features, and have a fun time. Fun tends not to be associated with documentation. I cannot tell you how important the documentation and training materials are. I would prefer seeing less new features but make sure the documentation is excellent and up-to-date. The PyQGIS documentation really needs a lot of work. It is not sufficient to let the functions and variable names explain what they do. Each variable needs to explained in such a way that the programmer will understand what effect it will have when they change the values. This is one thing that ESRI has done well - provide tons of documentation and training.

 

I hope these observations will be helpful to you as you plan QGIS 4. I don't want to go through what I have been going through with QGIS 3.

 

Cheers,

 

Calvin

 

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 11:33 AM Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it <mailto:cavallini at faunalia.it> > wrote:

Hi all,

On 25/06/19 13:46, Matthias Kuhn wrote:

> And with a good communication about a "gentle" break I'm confident that
> we'll have it easier this time.

agreed fully, good communication on these matters is of crucial
importance to let people accept new versions at move at the appropriate
time, to minimize noise.
Given the wide variety of networks, it will be difficult to properly
spread the tight word. Maybe we should have *official announcements* in
these occasions.
Also, I think the already proposed dynamic qgis access page could help a
lot here.
Cheers.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu <http://www.faunalia.eu> 
QGIS.ORG <http://QGIS.ORG>  Chair:
http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/
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