[Qgis-user] Comments on the QGIS map composer

[John C. Tull]

In this case, I would recommend the upgrade. I believe many of these issues were resolved between those builds. Perhaps you can download the all-in-one from William's site and try with a copy of your project file. There is not great risk of losing anything in your project if you open the copy and try from there.

Regards,
John

On Oct 12, 2010, at 1:03 AM, maning sambale wrote:

> Dear everyone,
> 
> For the past months, I am using QGIS more frequently for my map
> composition tasks instead of an external graphics app (like Scribus
> and Adobe Illustrator).
> 
> Many thanks for the great improvement of the past versions.
> 
> Below are my observations and recommendations for future map composer
> improvements.  Note that I
> am using QGIS 1.4 (on Mac osx 10.5), some issues I will post maybe
> solved already in 1.5 so disregard them if they are already solved.
> 
> (Yes, I know I should upgrade, but I don't normally upgrade while in
> the middle of a critical project :))
> 
> Some observed quirks:
> 1. Text sizes are not the same when viewed in the main map window, map
> composer and PDF output.  As a workaround, I try to set map canvas
> window to the desired output scale.
> 2. Sometimes images (using "Add image") with transparent background
> doesn't appear in the PDF output.  However, the PNG output shows the
> graphic. Setting the opacity to 100% resolves the problem.
> 3. Long legend text description doesn't wrap around the legend box.
> 4. Complex line styles (i. e. dashed) doesn't appear in the png output.
> 4. On a mac, Scale font options uses the mac font option window
> instead of the usual QGIS font option window (see image link).
> http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/5074097761_3d6af0fef4_z.jpg
> 
> For future improvement requests:
> 1. Layering - most graphic apps have them.  In a graphics app, I find
> it easy to manage my layout when I place the main map in a separate
> layer over other map elements (legend, scalebar, reference, other
> decorations). Perhaps a layer visibility toggle option.
> 2. More text layout options - text wrap for long legends, text alignment, etc.
> 3. Inter-data layer text collision resolution - for example, I have a
> point layer for placenames and then another point layer.  A nice
> feature that can recognize label collision between these two layers.
> 4. Multiple text layout (alignment, type size, type style) in a single
> text box.  As a workaround, I created several textboxes for different
> styling.
> 
> All in all, I am a happy QGIS user.  Hope to see more improvements
> with QGIS' cartography.
> 
> -- 
> cheers,
> maning
> ------------------------------------------------------
> "Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden
> wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/
> blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/
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