[Qgis-user] shapefile clipping behavior in qgis revision 13903

[Jim Hammack]

I am using QGIS to display oil spill extents and tropical weather in the 
Gulf of Mexico.   I've found that since I moved from 1.4.0 to  1.5.0 
(rev 13903) that the clipping behavior has changed, and not in a good 
way!   (This may have happened much earlier than rev 13903, but I 
haven't been keeping up with the latest revisions.)

It seems now that if any portion of a shapefile falls outside the view, 
the entire shapefile is omitted from the display instead of just being 
clipped at the edges of the window.

It's hard to explain so I've posted sample images at 
http://gotslack.org/qgis/shapefiles

oil_zoom_out_again.png shows state boundaries, oil spill extents and 
emergency fishing closures.  In oil_zoom_out.png the zoom level has 
changed, but I did not change the layers at all.  You can see that the 
emergency fishing closure polygon and several state boundaries were not 
plotted.

In oil_south.png I have panned to show the oils spill extent and the 
fishing boundary, but the state boundaries are not plotted.  As I pan up 
to oil_center.png, state boundaries and the fishing extents are not 
plotted because they all fall partially outside the window.  Panning up 
to oil_north.png shows the oil extent and only one state boundary is 
plotted because portions of the other states and the fishing boundary 
fall outside the window.

I don't think this is the behavior we want and I'm hoping that this is 
simply a configuration item that I have not been able to find.

Can anyone confirm that this is the expected behavior?  Is there a way 
to configure the project such that clipping is performed as it was in 1.4.0?

                                          Thanks,
                                             Jim