[Qgis-user] Question on default file formats

Tue Jul 28 23:36:39 PDT 2015

Hi Bernd, 

I partially agree with what you say below - but let's not forget a
couple of things: 

* QGIS is already an open and transparent project. So anyone can start
an initiative: users, developers, people and organizations. If you don't
know which developer could best implement feature X then ask on the QGIS
developers mailing list. Or ask the PSC. Also you can see each code
change on Github (https://github.com/qgis/QGIS [7]). Starting from last
year we also publish our finances each year, so you can see how
donations and sponsorships are used - the first report only covers half
a year. 

* The QGIS PSC is all volunteers. They don't get paid for their
involvement. So you cannot expect from them to do everything you wish in
their leisure time. They do their best effort, but all of them have
their day job. We work on organizing QGIS more professionally, with
legal entity and probably - if donations and sponsorships continue to
grow, also with more part-time paid staff. The only benefit that QGIS
PSC is currently travel support for the developer meetings and the
possibility to partially steer the project. 

The part where I don't agree with you is when you say that QGIS is a
developer driven project. While this is partially true, many, if not
most of the recent improvements were initiated and paid by
users/organizations. Just look at the Visual changelog where we try to
make it more transparent that QGIS is actually a user-driven project:
http://changelog.qgis.org/qgis/version/2.10/ 

I really think that users (even private persons, such as you) can start
an initiative to get things fixed or implemented in QGIS - it has been
done numerous times in the past. If you don't know where to start or who
to ask for a quote/estimate, just ask at the mailing lists. 

Why don't we give it a try? You start and coordinate the crowd-funding
initiative about replacing ESRI shapefiles as the default format. I will
support you and help get the PSC and developers involved. What do you
think? You would have to start with the requirements document, then get
a quote and start the initiative at some crowd funding site like
Kickstarter, Indiegogo or others. We will help advertise the project. Of
course we would have to set realistic goals and maybe split the overall
goal into 2-3 subprojects, like improving "Save AS", allowing
OGR/Geopackage in the resulting files of the Vector menu, improve DB
manager for Geopackage and finally improve Processing/SAGA. 

What do you think? 

Andreas 

On 2015-07-28 23:23, Bernd Vogelgesang wrote: 

> Hi Andreas, 
> 
> Am 28.07.2015, 21:54 Uhr, schrieb Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net>: 
> 
>> Hi Arni,
>> 
>> I think the QGIS community should start an effort to better support the Geopackage format (or any OGR format) - and should spend some financial resources to allow a developer to work several days to improve support for the Geopackage format. I suggested that to the QGIS PSC, but it doesn't seem to be a priority at the moment. Other issues seem to be more pressing (such as bug fixing, infrastructure, developer meetings).
>> 
>> However, any organization can come up and fund development to improve the situation. Or start a crowd-funding initiative to collect financial ressources from several organizations/people. It is just that noone had enough resources (money or time) to get rid of the Shapefiles in many places.
> 
> it is easily said, that the community should start an effort, but how should this be organized, if it's not organized by the organization already existing? 
> 
> You have a much better insight into the structure and the people involved than most of us. 
> 
> The recent crowd-funding initiatives I witnessed (and donated for) were successfull, even though the average users presumably had no idea what the subjects were about (automated testing: http://blog.vitu.ch/10102014-1046/crowdfunding-initiative-automated-testing , GRASS Plugin upgrade: http://www.gissula.eu/qgis-grass-plugin-crowdfunding/ ) 
> 
> But those initiatives came from the developers themselves, who exactly know what has to be done, how much time it will take, and how much money has to be there to get things done. 
> 
> To start an arbitrary crowd-funding initiative just by anyone, with no idea how to actually define the goal and not even having a developer at hand is possible, but is it a good idea? 
> 
> When things then go wrong, the hole way of supporting the project will be discredited. 
> 
> Quite some while ago, I made the proposal to set up a website, where people could search or post feature requests, which could be up- or downvoted by other users, which could be managed/moderated/combined/split by "experts" and after some time, for the best-rated proposal(s), a crowd-funding initiative would be started. 
> 
> The echo on this proposal from the "officials" was not really enthusiastic. Reasons: No time, no money, not enough developers. 
> Vicious circle completed... 
> 
> QGIS is a developer-driven project, and I can imagine that the devs prefer a sponsor with a defined goal and 5.000EUR. 
> I can maybe donate 25EUR on something (ahh, I would even spend 50EUR to get rid of f... shape files, and I'm sure that we would find another 100 people feeling the same). 
> 
>> The most difficult problem to solve is Processing with SAGA, but other than that, at least the "Save AS" and the vector menu could be improved to offer e.g. Geopackage as default, or let the user choose any OGR format.
>> 
>> If you would start such an initiative I would very much support it. And who knows - maybe even the QGIS PSC would partially support such an initiative (maybe also financially).
> 
> Wouldn't it be better to start a crowd-funding initiative with the goal, to set up a proper regime for crowd-funding feature requests by setting up the necessary infrastructure (website), paying someone to take care of the requests and deal with possible developers? 
> 
> May sound a bit weird, but still better than the frequent "You could hire someone to code this feature"-answers on this list. 
> 
> But who would organize this? 
> ... in the vicious circle again ... 
> 
> I nevertheless love QGIS :) 
> Bernd 
> 
> Andreas
> 
> On 28.07.2015 18:20, Árni Geirsson wrote: 
> Thank you Alex - that answers my question completely. 
> 
> Arni 
> 
> Árni Geirsson
> ALTA EHF // +354 582 5000 // +354 897 9549 
> www.alta.is [2] // Alta á Twitter [3] // Alta á Facebook [4] 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 4:15 PM, Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> wrote:
> It's more elaborate than that. Not all applications in the toolbox can
> read Spatialite yet either (e.g. SAGA). So the intermediate is something
> all the tools can use. At some point the toolbox might get developed to
> were any ogr data source can be used for the intermediates, but it isn't
> there yet. I ran into this issue with Postgis a couple of years ago, and
> the whole point of using Postgis was to escape the limitations of the
> shapefile (particularly file size).
> 
> In some ways if you use Spatialite or Postgis you don't actually need a
> lot of the basic tools as those can all be done with SQL via the DB
> Manager or QSpatialite.
> 
> As for Geopackage, keep in mind it's an exchange format. Even with 2.8
> I've had no issues reading GPKG files in, though I've been creating them
> with ogr2ogr on the command line to convert whole databases at a time
> between Spatialite and other formats.
> 
> Shapefile still remains the lowest common denominator. I agree other
> formats should be suggested first by the save dialog since shp can cause
> data loss (date/time, field names, etc).
> 
> Thanks,
> Alex
> 
> On 07/28/2015 09:04 AM, Árni Geirsson wrote:
>> Thanks for the answer Jim. I understand that the shapefiles are lingua
>> franca but to me that would imply that they should be used when exchange
>> with other applications is needed - which is not always. But I had not
>> realized that I might be constraining the set of available tools if I use
>> SpatiaLite. Does this mean that if I have my date in SpatiaLite, many of
>> the tools in the Processing toolbox would not be available to me?
>>
>> Arni
>>
>>
>> Árni Geirsson
>> *Alta ehf* // +354 582 5000 [5] // +354 897 9549 [6]
>> www.alta.is [2] // Alta á Twitter <http://twitter.com/alta_ehf [3]> // Alta á
>> Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alta/161795813838691?v=wall [4]>
>> 
>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 3:54 PM, James Keener <jim at jimkeener.com> wrote:
>>
>>> More tools support it. Spatialite wasn't supported in esri until very
>>> recently and other tools may not support anything but shape files. It's
>>> become a lingual franca, and like English: it's terrible, but works well
>>> enough.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> On July 28, 2015 11:38:24 AM AST, "Árni Geirsson" <arni at alta.is> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello
>>>> I find it interesting that the ancient shapefile format is (or at least
>>>> appears to be) the default file format for QGIS when SpatiaLite seems to be
>>>> a much more capable format. I have been using mostly shapefiles and when
>>>> using for example the tools under the vector menu, intermediate results are
>>>> saved as shapefiles, leading to a big pile of files after a short session
>>>> of vector processing. Now, I have discovered that by using the processing
>>>> tools the intermediates can be temporary files (still shapefiles, just
>>>> hidden away in a temporary folder). After saving a temporary file as a
>>>> SpatiaLite file, I can enter field names longer than 10 characters but I
>>>> can not add a text field that accommodates more than 255 characters.
>>>> So my question is: Why is the shapefile format the default?
>>>>
>>>> I have also noticed that with 2.10 I can save in Geopackage format. Does
>>>> that mean that support for this format has improved?
>>>>
>>>> Any insights are highly appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> Arni Geirsson
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Qgis-user mailing list
>>>> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user [1]
>>>>
>>>>
>>> --
>>> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Bernd Vogelgesang
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