[QGIS-Developer] Profile plugins

Wed Sep 4 12:30:54 PDT 2019

Hi all,

 I'm writing about the status of the qProf plugin.
Its main purpose is to help create geological profiles.
As such, the topographic profile is fundamentally the base to add:
- geological attitudes
- lineaments intersections
- outcrop (polygon) intersections
- topographic traces projections on the profile.
I am not sure whether these tools are really needed in a topographic profile tool.
Currently, I am rewriting the code, in order to allow to create geological profiles directly in a Jupyter notebook (no QGIS libraries use). The GUI will be created afterward and tested in a standalone Python app, and at the end, everything would be inserted in the qgSurf plugin as an additional module. 
The qProf plugin per se could be then deprecated and is currently in bug-fix mode.

mauro

> Il 4 settembre 2019 alle 10.01 Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> any further comments?
> Cheers.
> 
> On 27/08/19 18:11, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> > Hi Javier,
> > 
> > On 27/08/19 10:54, Javier Becerra Elcinto wrote:
> > 
> >> (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.
> > 
> > Glad you agree.
> > 
> >> 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.
> > 
> > Agreed fully, this seems the best approach.
> > 
> >> 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.
> > 
> > a sane thing to do for sure
> > 
> >> -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.
> > 
> > a very thorough description, thanks
> > 
> >> 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.
> > 
> > Thanks again, looking forward for other devs' comments.
> > 
> > Cheers.
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS.ORG Chair:
> http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/
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