[Qgis-psc] [QGIS-Developer] Grant report: Integrate GPS Tools plugin functionality into core QGIS

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

Hi Nyall,

Supercool!!!

I thought to try to walk around (literally) a little (after it took me some time to find out how to connect a bluetooth GPS dongle....).

Some findings:

- all seems to work (as I think better then) as in the old plugin..

- I find the way you can 'save' your gps track (or points) to some file/layer not so intuitive...:
the 'Add Line'-button will change to an 'Add Point'-button when you change a (editable) point or line layer... would it be nice to add some hints somewhere? Maybe if the button is disabled add a caption or tooltip: "editable point or line layer needed"?

- would it be nice to add a HELP button somewhere in the Panel pointing to the docs of live gps: https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/working_with_gps/live_GPS_tracking.html

- my first line I saved, had as starting point 0.0, 0.0? Not sure if that was the result of all my fooling around with the gps, or that it is a small itch in the creation of the first line?

- the size of the cursor can be changed, but it does not show immediately? Only if  you have an active (changing) gps log, then it repaints on change. Is it possible to do a repaint (of the cursor) upon change (?? I know cursors are nasty beasts... ??)

- in Linux/Debian, if you enable 'Location Services' in your (Gnome) Privacy Settings you will have th little 'gps'-button in your top bar, AND QGIS WILL USE THAT (via qt-geoclue apparently!!).
In my case that meaned: NO gps attached, but still pretty good showing where I was (if I am correct, it uses the Mozilla Location Service, which uses the wifi access point info???)

One question:

what is that Leap seconds? Do the gps satellites have old clocks or so, which are (18?) seconds behind (see screenie).

About the new settings tree: I have the feeling that the icons in the tree are pretty tiny, and they do not follow the 'icon size' setting. Is that by (qt) design?

Anyway: thanks for all this work, it always costs me some time to hobby around with it ;-) BUT: worth it!

Regards,

Richard Duivenvoorde
 

On 8/2/21 7:06 AM, Nyall Dawson wrote:
> Hi lists,
> 
> With the final pull request just submitted
> (https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/44508), I'm happy to announce that
> the QGIS grant work: "Integrate GPS Tools plugin functionality into
> core QGIS" is now complete. You can read more about the motivation
> behind this work at
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/217
> 
> This grant sees the removal of the old, unmaintained "GPS Tools" core
> plugin, with all functionality from the plugin moved to reusable
> Processing algorithms or the unified Data Source Manager dialog. Since
> the functionality now uses the Processing framework, users gain the
> ability to run these tools in batch modes, as part of graphical
> models, and from 3rd party scripts and plugins.
> 
> As a bonus the new tools are all fully covered by unit tests.
> 
> Additionally, I also used this opportunity to revamp the global
> settings dialog. This dialog has been growing over time as more and
> more settings from other parts of QGIS are added to the dialog.
> (That's a great thing -- unifying the settings in one place makes them
> much more discoverable for users!). In order to avoid loss of
> usability in this dialog due to the addition of yet another settings
> page (for GPSBabel Devices), I've instead reworked the dialog to use a
> "tree" structure for the settings pages. This helps group related
> settings pages together, and provides more hints to users about where
> particular settings reside. (I'm hoping to take further advantage of
> this restructuring to move some more isolated options pages into the
> global options dialog, such as moving the Custom Projections dialog to
> a new page within the "CRS and transforms" group).
> 
> Thanks again for the opportunity to complete this work!
> 
> Nyall
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