[Qgis-user] My first weekend with QGIS.

[Nathan Woodrow]

Hey John,

First thanks for the feedback. Glad to see your first experience wasn't too
bad despite the issues that you run into.

You are right that this is best sent to the dev list as that is where we
all hang out, the user email is mainly for end users who may or may not be
involved in the development.  I will forward this to the dev list for more
feedback for you.

Splitting this up into features/bugs and into the right categories is
definitely the right way to go forward but as you said sometimes it's best
to just get it out first.  To make these actionable I suggest you turn them
into tickets whenever you have the chance.

Also be aware of the iceberg issue here and that small things might be
massive under the hood which can explain why things are the way they are.
Good news is that we are getting stronger as a dev team, Qt5 is really
good, so things are getting much better as we evolve.

With that said here is some feedback on your feedback (removed some just
because I don't think I need to comment on everything, we can do that on
the tickets.):

> * Pixelated app-icon.

Known issues. Should be a ticket and a PR that will hopefully resolve it
for 3.0 and backported.

* Tool icons don’t show keyboard shortcuts on hover (tooltips).

> Main reason for this is that tooltips are hardcoded in the UI files,
however,
> shortcuts are set in the app itself.  This could be fixed pretty easy I
think
> by just looping all actions and adding shortcut text.


* Tooltips are too slow for beginning users.

> I suspect this is just a OS X thing as on Windows they show really quick.
> One of the devs with OS X might have to look into that one.


* Undo is very limited. For instance.
>
>
> Good thing is that adding undo is easy thanks to Qt.  Styling has a
(almost) unlimited undo stack,
> as well as editing.  We do need to add undo in other places so it's just
a matter of time really and
> knowing the places too put them.  There isn't just one big undo stack for
the whole application because
> that would mean you could undo edit changes when you really wanted to
undo a layer group add, etc.


So it just needs some thought

> * Keyboard shortcut configuration is broken.


> . As a prelude, the first time you open the Configure Shortcuts


This should be fixed in 3.0 as Alex did some recent changes there.

> . It displays the wrong modifier for OS X. E.g. Add Vector Layer is
>   Cmd-Shift-V, but it is displayed as Ctrl-Shift-V.


This might be a Qt thing as we use it for handling shortcuts. But unsure
>
>
> . Not broken, but it sure would be nice to be able to export a
>   shortcut set to a text file so you could search through it in a text
>   editor.


3.0 will have shortcut search. Export would be easy enough to add I suspect.

> * Left keyboard arrow inside a hierarchical list (such as in a Layer
>   Group in the Layers panel, but many other places) does not move the
>   selection up one level of hierarchy to the parent, nor does it close
>   the open layer group. It should do one of those things. Is this a Qt
issue?


Works for me on Windows. Left will move up one and close children. Up arrow
just moves up.
This is default Qt tree widgets most of the time.

> * There apppears to be no indication of which subwindow/pane has the
>   keyboard focus.


Styling is all handling by Qt and is based on OS.  We can override it with
theming but that also
has mixed results.  Just needs more digging.
>
>
> . Although there is a blue highlight around a currently active widget,


Handled by Qt for now.
>
>
> . The title bar of the currently active panel should change somehow to
>   indicate it is active. And there should be some related mechanism
>   for the Map Window.


See Qt comment for now.

> * There is no no keyboard shortcut to switch between panels, at least
>   when the panels are docked.


I have thought about this before.  It's easy to do just need to work out a
good
workflow for the shortcuts that makes sense. I have thought about
Ctrl+1,2,3,4 etc but
unsure

> . After undocking a panel from the main window, keyboard panel
>   navigation is...borked. Cmd-` ought to cycle through an
>   application's windows, but it half-works. If a floating panel is
>   selected, Cmd-` moves focus to the main window. But another Cmd-`
>   does not move it back, nor does Cmd-Shift-` (which should cycle in
>   the other direction through the ring of all windows).


Might be a Qt issue? Also at times if you don't parent a window correctly
you can
get strange results.

> * The project's filename is not properly displayed in the window's
>   title bar using the OS mechanism. That means there is no icon next
>   to the filename, and and you cannot Cmd-click on the titlebar to
>   open the enclosing folder in the Finder.


Might also be a Qt thing as some things are not exposed to use to changed.
However there
has been work to have out own wrapper to underlying OS APIs in order to
access things Qt doesn't wrap.
Might be solvable but unsure.
>
>
> * It is too easy to dock panels sometimes. If I start with the Layer
>   Styling panel docked on the right, if I try to expand its width to
>   the left, I can inadvertently dock it to the top the main window. I
>   have not then been able to figure out how to re-dock it to the
>   right, where it belongs. I can float it, but that's not the
>   same. Had to quit and restart.


Agree Qt docking is a bit strange.  Seems it might be better in Qt 5 for
QGIS 3.0 but
I haven't tested much yet. We have played with the idea of hanlding the
docking ourself but
that also requires some dev work.

> * Having multiple vertically stacked widget groups that can have their
>   own vertical scrollbars within a single panel is very
>   confusing. Especially because you can resize these vertical widget
>   groups -- sometimes accidently. It's possible to get a really messed
>   up Layer Styling panel because of this. And it is worse beacuse
>   there can be multiple apparently active vertical scrollbars in the
>   same panel, e.g. the scrollbar for the top/main part of the
>   Symbology pane, as well as for the Symbol List beneath "Symbols in
>   group". That means the user doesn't know what the trackpad
>   scrolling/mouse scroll wheel is going to do -- which one is going to
>   scroll? (answer: the one you didn't want). This problem is also
>   visible in, e.g. Preferences > System > Environment vars.


Yes this is a tricky problem to solve when we are buildling a generic
application
that can run on a range of systems with ranges of screen sizes.  To make
things work
Qt on OS X seems to pad widgets out tons more then other systems so things
get into this state more then
they really should.
>
>
> * The "Step up" and "Step down" functions (e.g. up/down arrows for
>   adjusting the point size of fonts or width of strokes/outlines,
>   etc.) are sometimes scaled inadequately.


See comment about widget padding on OS X.

> . There should be an easy way to increase the stepsize. The usual UI
>   idiom (sadly not discoverable!) is to shift-click the up/down arrows
>   to multiply by 10x. The inverse is to option-click for finer
>   control, typically 1/10x but maybe a different factor, or maybe an
>   integer unit.


We use a sub class of QSpinBox now for everything so this might be easier
but
not sure.
>
>
> * Numerical adjustment boxes with multiple units should convert
>   values when units are changed. For instance, if I have a font
>   specified as 13 Points, and I switch the units to Map Units, then it
>   should be stay 13 Map Units. It should convert, as appropriate, (for
>   map units, of course that dependson the current
>   scale/magnification). So also for pixels, millimeters, etc.
> . In this US, millimeter are not a common unit for design. It would be
>   nice to have points (1/72" of an inch) available as well. Not just
>   for fonts, but also for strokes/outlines.


See comment about custom spinbox.  Can be done just needs time.
>
>
> * The default font is Helvetica, which is fine, but for some reason
>   QGIS won't show me any subfaces of Helvetica by default. If I switch
>   to another font and then switch back to Helvetica, then I am given
>   the proper face choices (Light, Regular, Oblique, &c.). Something's
>   wrong with the font selection defaults (perhaps in Qt?)


Qt issue. Fonts are strange. Might be solved in Qt5 but unsure.
>
>
> * When I select a new font, the font face defaults to the first face
>   alphabetically, which is usually Bold. That is not correct. It
>   should default to the default face, e.g. Regular or Roman or Black
>   or whatnot.
> * When opening a medium-sized QGIS project, I initially get an a
>   black-and-white quartered circle cursor, which seems like it's
>   intended to be an hourglass, and that lasts for about 3 seconds.
>   Then it switches to the OSX rainbow beachball ("spinning wait
>   cursor") intermittently for a few seonds, and then QGIS responds.
>   Appearence of the beachball means some kind of thread badness, I
>   think -- it should only show up when the run loop is blocking
>   for too long, and that shouldn't happen, so it's a bug in of itself.


This will need more digging into layer types, etc, as QGIS has threaded
rendering
it shoudl return to the UI quickly after opening the project, but there
might be other things
that are blocking before the rendering takes over.

> * View > Toogle Full Screen...does not really do what I want. I would
>   like a way to make the Map Window consume all of QGIS's screen real
>   estate, hiding any currently floating panels and taking the space of
>   any docked panels. In the Adobe Creative Suite programs, TAB does
>   this. Instead, in QGIS, Toggle FS seems to just allow QGIS to use
>   the 24px normally occupied by my menu bar. Sure, sometimes that
>   might be handy to do, but not as much as I'd like to be able to see
>   the full map without all the panels.


Shift+Tab in QGIS 3.0 will hide all dock panels and give the map all the
screen space.
I quite like the idea that Visual Studio has with Full-Screen and
Presentation Mode which do different things
Maybe we can use that style of full screening.
>
>
> . F11 is bound to View > Toggle full screen, but OS X steals that
>   keybinding for an OS function ("Show Desktop"). If it's not going to
>   work, it shouldn't appear by default in the menu.
> . If you enter fullscreen mode and then Cmd-TAB to another app and go
>   back to QGIS and toggle full screen some more, it's possible to
>   screw it up. Right now I have QGIS in a state where Toggle FS
>   switches between occupying the full screen (including the 24px of
>   menu bar) or appearing right below the menu bar. But I can't get
>   back to having a main window with window decorations that I can
>   resize or move around the screen. Wacky. Restarting fixed it.


Might be a Qt thing, as we are just calling show max.

> * If you undock the Layers panel (and presumably others) and put it in
>   the middle of the screen (for some reason), then if you restart
>   QGIS, it can occlude the Recent Projects pane, making you think QGIS
>   is hung. But it's really waiting for you to do something in the
>   Recent Projects pane, it's just that you can't see it. Oops?
>   Conclsuion: Recent Projects should be on top of floating panels?


One of the primary reasons I hate dialogs however people like to be able to
float the dock
panels so this is not a easy one to solve. Recent projects is a hidden tab
in the main window so can't be above
the dock panels. Of course this can be changed with differnt UI layouts in
QGIS but this is just how it is for now.

> * Recent Projects shows the filename, but cuts the wrong side of the
>   dots. If my filename is "2017.01.14 qgis learning.qgs," it shows me
>   "2017", cutting off to the left of the first dot. But instead it
>   should cut off to the left of the LAST dot.


Good easy fix.
>
>
> * With the Aqua UI (MacOS native) selected, the Cancel and OK buttons
>   have the text shifted too high by a few pixels. It looks subtly
>   bad/wrong.  On OS X 10.10, the system font is Helvetica Neue. Sure
>   enough, changing Preferences: General: Font to Helvetica Neue fixes
>   the shift. Is this supposed to happen?


Qt handles all the styling so I suspect it's in there.  Qt5 might solve it.

> . It is a bit annoying I cannot select a font (in Preferences:
>   General) until I hit the radio button next to the font
>   dropdown. That radio button should autoselect when you click in the
>   Font dropdown.


Easy fix.

> * Preferences: Icon Size doesn't seem to honor the Cancel/OK button at
>   the bottom of the window. If I choose 64px icons and then I hit
>   Cancel, they stay 64px.


Ongoing effort to make this uniform.

LAYERS PANEL:
>
>
> . I tend to think the new group should be added above or below the
>   cursor / highlighted group.



>
> Should be a easy fix.
>
>
> * I had trouble finding the icon to delete layers. At first I thought


Mathieu is redoing a lot of the icons that are bad for 3.0 so he is the
best person.
>
>
> * If I try to Remove a just-added empty group, QGIS gives me a warning
>   dialog box. That seems wrong -- empty groups should remove without
>   warning, otherwise it contributes to desensitizing the user to
>   warnings, which is bad.


Agree.  It's just a generic remove handler here.
>
>
> * Which leads to...I inadvertently removed the wrong layer, and
>   clicked OK and it was gone. Edit > Undo would not recover from this
>   situation. Very unfortunate.


Yes this has been on the wish-list/todo-list for a while.  A few things
needed to be in place
first but I suspect this can happen in 3.0 now.
>
>
> * It is unfortunate that the icons for Expand/Collapse layers
>   are Up and Down arrows. This leads to the confusing impression that
>   they will move layers up and down the layer listing, but they don't.
>   Since the hierarchical list widget shows depth with horizontal
>   spacing, expand/contract are better done with horizontal arrows (if
>   you're going to use arrows at all, which might not be best).


Agree. Just needs needs some better icons or even removed and moved into
the eye icon.

> * If I have styled a layer by Category, and then I expand the
>   disclosure triangle in the Layers panel to show those categories,
>   and then click on the layer and select it: then if I use the
>   keyboard (or mouse, but that's more confusing) to go up/down by
>   category with the arrow keys, the currently selected category
>   doesn't highlight. But it is clearly selected -- hitting spacebar
>   will toggle its visibility. So something is wrong here.
> * If I use Remove Layer/Group, I get warnings about "Legend Entries."
>   Why/how is a layer a synonym for a legend entry? Is that just an
>   error?


Generic remove handler. Should be an easy fix.
>
>
> * I'm surprised I cannot Select All Layers somehow, such that I can
>   do things like Show Feature Count on all of them. I'd expect it in
>   the context menu or maybe the menubar Layer menu... I realize
>   shift-Click works.


Good point. Ctrl+A should be added in here for that.

> * Apparently double-clicking on a layer can be configured to do
>   different things (Open Layer Properties, Open attribute table; Open
>   Layer Styling Dock)? This is a bit strange. It seems that it should
>   do one thing only, and there shouldn't be a preference to change it
>   so radically.


They are options mainly because people wanted them to do different things,
however part of the move into 3.0 is to remove options like this because it
confusing for training, and IMO we just need to do one thing and not have
options
for every moving part.
>
>
>   But in any event, all 3 are useful things to do, and there should be
>   an easy and fast way to them. The obvious choice is
>   modifiers. Cmd/Ctrl-click for the Attribute table, and
>   Option/Alt-click for the layer styling dock.
>   It's especially important to have a good way to open the Attributes
>   panel beacuse on a Mac hitting F6 is mildly annoying --
>   effectively it's Fn-F6, unless you have decided to forgo the OS's
>   media key functions (maybe appropriate if you spend a lot of time in
>   apps that are heavy on function keys, which QGIS is not?).


Functions keys are using a far bit in other platforms, I'm generaelly not a
fan of Apple moving people way
from them for this reason however it's still a valid point and you should
still have good shortcuts on each platform.

Some current function keys in 2.18 are:

F1 - Help
F2 - Rename
F3 - Search
F7 - Layer Style
F11 - Fullscreen
etc

Fucntion key are a good thing I think but having other shortcuts is still
fine.

LAYER STYLING:

> * The column dropdowns in Layer Styling are hard to use, for Fitt's
>   Law reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law
>   Most of the time, I think, people want to select an existing column
>   from a list, rather than to type one in from scratch.  But of a
>   328px wide "Column" widget, 310px are for the text field, and that
>   leaves 18 px for the button. But you want the large button to be the
>   thing people use most often (per Fitt's Law).


At the moment these comboboxes are also text entry for expressions.  You
can type an expression
in or pick a column from the list.  This ia s custom combo box so we might
be able to do some fixes around
this to make it better, but that is the main reason it is a text style
entry and just just a click from list.

> . Ideally, clicking anywhere in the field should give you the
>   dropdown, and then if you start typing, you can override the list
>   with your own choice. This certainly makes sense when the column
>   textbox is blank. When it's non-blank (a column is selected), I
>   think this is also a reasonable way to go. However I don't have a UI
>   precedent to offer for it.


See comment above about also supporting expressions here.
>
>
> * In the Labelling pane, Rendering tab, the GUI looks very strange if
>   you collapse the 3 disclosure triangles (Label optons, Feature
>   options, Obstacles). Two float at the top and one at the very
>   bottom.
>   It's not clear why there should be disclosure triangles at all in
>   this UI, given the presence of a vertical scroll bar.
> * In both the Layer Styling: Labelling pane and the Layer Properties
>   window, the tabs have headings at the top like Text, Formatting,
>   Buffer, etc. Those headings are in the same typeface as the widget
>   beneath them, so they don't afford  as headings. They should be in
>   boldface, or separated, or something to indicate the hierarchy.


On going effort to uniform all this but just takes time.

> * The overlap between Layer Properties and Layer Styling can be
>   extremely confusing. The two UIs are similar enough that it's easy
>   to get confused, and then easy to get frustrated when you can't find
>   something that are sure was there. E.g. AutoApply is in the styling
>   but not the properties. And the UIs widgets are slightly different.
>   What is the reason for this inconsistency and can it be remedied?


Layer styling was a close to feature freeze of 2.16 feature that was added
by me.  I simply ran out of
time for the cut out to move everything and since then haven't had time to
relook.  The general plan was to move all style
related things into the style panel and kill the layer properties Style and
Label tabs, however this takes time, more UX thought, etc.

Can this be made better yes. Just takes time, money, and dev effort.  Layer
Styling dock was added to remove the blocking dialog
workflow that was there before and was quite a large scope of changes so
simply time was not with me on that one.

MENUS:
>
>
> * Layer > Labelling feels very weird. It pops up the Layer Styling
>   panel, but its not a panel control, like View > Panels > Layer
>   Styling.


Is for me in 2.16 and above. That action just calls show panel on Layer
Style.
>
>
> . If you already have the the Layer Styling panel open on the Labels
>   pane, it appears to do nothing. This is confusing. (Should it be
>   greyed out?)


It will select the label tab in the style panel. Does for me at least.
This action is a hang over from < 2.16 when it used to open a dialog for
labels.
Now calls Layer Styling dock. Was left into order to move people to the
layer style dock and get
used to doing it there.

> . It feels like it should have a checkmark next to it to indicate the
>   panel is open. Although it's not clear to my why this function even
>   exists. Where are the parallel Layer > Symbology or Layer > History
>   menu items?


See comment above.
>
>
> * Why are some things Create Layer and others Add Layer? It seems like
>   the distinction is not very clear. Esp. because Add Delimited Text
>   Layer produces a dialog named "Create a Layer from a Delimited Text
>   File."


History and some providers don't let you make new layers. Create is make a
new layer from nothing
e.g a new shapefile, add is load an existing one.
>
>
> * I am troubled by the decision path for the Add Layer menu options
>   (and toolbar icons). I have to think about what kind of file I want
>   to add before I navigate to that file, which seems wrong. And QGIS
>   clearly knows how to figure out what to do based on the file type --
>   it works from the Browser Panel, and works if I drag and drop a
>   shapefile on the app. So why isn't there a simple Open File or Add
>   Layer dialog that lets me choose any filetype and adds it as a layer
>   as-appopriate? The specialized non-file interfaces can remain, or
>   they could combined into a fancy dialog box. But for dealing with
>   local files, the paradigm seems "off."


History and on going effort to uniform this process. Has been on the card
for a while
but is a big job to get right.

> . It also has no title bar in its window; and it's missing a bunch of
>   window decorations, too.


QT OS X thing I suspect.

> * Settings > Style Manager also pops up a window with no title bar or
>   upper window decorations. Weird...


QT OS X thing I suspect.

> * In Style Manager, if you double click a marker icon, you get a very
>   small 407x279px window. But the window should be much larger, like
>   320x630px at a minimum, to display all the widgets. In the initial
>   small size, it's not completely obvious there are offscreen widgets,
>   so it just feels confusing. You can miss Units, Transparency, etc.


Known bug just needs some time to fix.
>
>
> * Hierarchical menus are bad. They can be a necessary evil in a
>   complex application like QGIS, but their use should be minimized
>   where possible. Because of Fitt's Law, it is challenging for humans
>   to mouse into hierarchical menus, and they make for a bad user
>   experience.


On going effort to make this better but takes time and remvoing things
which people
never really like.

>
> * There is no Project > Revert function. Because of the limited Undo
>   functionality, it should be easy to go back to the last saved
>   version. Of course you can Project > Open, but a Revert function
>   would be nice.


I have prototyped a full project history concept that might make 3.0 if I
get time.
>
>
> * QGIS wants to always have a project open, which feels
>   weird. Especially because at startup, it has no project open, and
>   displays the Recent Projects window instead of the Map Window.  So
>   it feels like you ought to be able to get back to that state by
>   closing the current project, i.e. a QGIS > Close command. But that
>   doesn't exist. Why not?


Hisotry and just the way the UI expects things at the moment.

> . I also tend to think that the app should not exit instantly when you
>   click the red "close window" decoration in its main window. I
>   realize it's not a document window, but it feels like one. So at
>   least a dialog "Do you want to exit QGIS?" would seem meritted.


OS X Qt thing I suspect. We have limited OS X devs so things are not as
clean there as the other
platforms.


MAP WINDOW TOOLS
>
>
> * Identify Results goes out-of-window. When I select Identify Features
>   and click on a feature, I get a a 565px-wide Identify Results
>   window, with about 700px worth of content. The "Feature" column
>   takes up all 565px initially (more), so unless you happen to notice
>   the [somewhat subtle, becuase of OS X Aqua] horizontal scrollbar at
>   the bottom, it's easy to miss that QGIS even has a "Value" column,
>   that just happens to be scrolled out of view. The default column
>   width of Feature should be small enough that you can see there is a
>   Value column. And ideally both should be somewhat balanced so they
>   can be both read. 50/50%?
> . The Identify Results panel has controls at the bottom of it that
>   affect the behavior of the Identify Features tool! This is
>   definitely unexpected -- it is a Results panel, not a Control
>   panel. One would normally expect such controls to be in the toolbar,
>   (Photoshop does this with many tools, popping up tool-specific
>   application bar). It's especially strange because these controls,
>   which are not initially visible, affect the use of a tool which is
>   visible.


I'm generally not a fan of that panel or the tool itself. I have plans to
rework it but will take time
and more UX work. Any minor fixes until that point are of course welcome.

> . Perhaps rename Identify Results to Identify? Better to relocate the
>   controls to a toolbar? Or as a transition, do both?
> * The zoom tool icon design is...kinda clunky. I think it's mostly
>   because it's more like a diamond with rounded off corner rather than
>   a circle, like in most apps. Can we change it?


hmm looks pretty round to me. We can change it easy as long as there is
something good to
replace it with.

> . The difference in appearance between the toolbar icon and the canvas
>   icon that selects it is...dissonant. They ought to be as similar as
>   possible.


I'm not sure we can have a svg as a cursor but if we can we can make them
the same, if not
they have to me made the same.

> . Normally I expect option-clicking the zoom in tool to give me zoom
>   out functionality, and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to happen here.


Pretty sure this has been fixed by Nyall, or at lesat someone. Maybe only
in 3.0.:


> * The hand tool does not behave like the hand tool does in most other
>   applications. In most apps, dragging with hand tool pans the canvas
>   in the window, and a single click of the hand tool does nothing
>   special.


Panning works here fine
>
>
> . But in QGIS, a single click of the hand tool recenters the map on
>   the spot of the click. I realize that ArcMap does this too, but I
>   definitely find it weird and off-putting, and it's not what the hand
>   tool does in the software I'm used to. (UI guideline: if two things
>   look the same but have subtly different characteristics, it will
>   annoy users.)


We try and match other GIS software for this stuff because that is what we
are. We don't
try and emulate CAD or design stuff because it's different unless it makes
sense in context.


> * On a trackpad, two-finger touch normally scrolls/pans a window.
>   In QGIS, it zooms in and out. That's probably appropriate for a
>   mouse with a scroll wheel, but it works very poorly on a trackpad.
>   For one thing, the zoom is far too fast, and there isn't much
>   control.


Fixed in 3.0 and maybe in a backport.


ATTRIBUTES WINDOW:
>
>
> * The toggle editing mode (hereafter TEM) icon misuses the "greyed
>   out"/disabled convention, and this misuse is terribly confusing to
>   users. A greyed out icon is supposed to mean it is UNCLICKABLE. Not
>   that everything else is unclickable until you click this one icon. I
>   think the proper icon here is a locked or unlocked padlock (and
>   never grey). The other icons properly have an active/inactive state
>   that goes with the toggle editing mode icon.
> . The TEM button seems to be global rather than window-specific.
>   E.g. clicking TEM in the attribute window (de)activates the TEM icon
>   in the Digitizing Toolbar, which is on by deafult. This is
>   nonintuitive and causes flashing in parts of the UI where your eyes
>   are not focused, which is distracting/annoying. I think it also
>   violates expectations.


There is only one layer and it has a single editable state.  At the moment
the attribute tables
are simply a view over the layer and nothing else so edit there mean edit
in the main window.

> . Clicking TEM in the attributes window also causes the main map
>   window to redraw. Again, annoying flashing, and also it may have
>   performance implicatinos.


See above comment.

* Tooltips have keyboard shortcuts here! This is wonderful! And yet it
  underscores their lack elsewhere.
>
>
> Hard coded shortcuts here. So they are in the UI file.
>
>
> * The Attributes Window should have its name in the title bar, as all
>   windows should.


Does on other platforms, suspect a Qt OS x thing.

> * When opening a table with just a few columns (e.g. 4), they are often
very
>   small widths, truncating the display of data. Where there is excess
>   space, QGIS should autofit the colum widths in this window.


I think this has already been fixed.

OTHER WINDOWS:
>
>
> * Query Builder (Cmd-F, Filter on a layer): Has a bright blue OK
>   button in the bottom-right corner, indicating that it is the default
>   function when you hit Return [or maaaaaybe Enter, aka
>   Fn-Return]. But pressing either of those thigns doesn't
>   work. Probably it needs:
> . Fn-Return should click the OK button.
> . Most user won't know that, so the OK button should have a tooltip
>   making that clear.
> . As a last resort, the blue could be turned off, but that is a bad
>   workaround, not a solution.
> . Cmd-. should always activate the Cancel button. It does nothing
>   here. Escape should work, too.
> . The other buttons (Help, Test, Clear as well as Sample and All)
>   should probably have keybindings too. This is easy to do without
>   conflict since it's a modal dialog.
> . As an aside, this is an awesome window. It works great! And the Test
>   function is super-useful.
> . I wonder if the Help wouldn't better off as an adjunct panel
>   (sidebar?) that slides out to the right of the Query Builder window,
>   rather than a seperate window itself. I think that would make it a
>   bit easier to use.


Super old dialog that has been there for a long time so just needs some TLC.
>
>
> * Settings > Style Manager allows me to edit symbols, but not to copy
>   or duplicate existing symbols. This seems peculiar -- I want to test
>   out changes without destroying what I have already.


Might already be fixed in 3.0 with some recent large changes.
>
>
> * Plugins > Manage and Install: the one plugin I looked at was the
>   "eastcustomlabeling" plugin. But when I followed the links to it
>   from the Plugins dialog, I get 404 Not Found.
>   http://hub.qgis.org/projects/easycustomlabeling
>   Not sure if this is a larger issue or just this plugin?


Plugin author issue to update links to their plugin homepage.

> * There is a lot that I find a bit odd about the Print Composer and
>   it's UI paradigm, but some small items:


Nyall will comment more on these as he is the composer guy.

> . The first and most prominent button in the Print Composer window is
>   Save Project. That seems strange -- both because (a) Save Project
>   doesn't seem like it belongs in the composer at all (since it is
>   global), esp. as the main window's Save Project button is still
>   visible in the default composer window size; and (b) most people
>   probably save with Cmd-S  on the keyboard. Isn't there a more
>   important button that could be in that special position, the "100%
>   corner" as it were?


Composers are saved in the project so it makes sense to save the project
here in order to save the composer.
At the moment you can't save one without the other.
>
>
> . Project > New Composer Window: gives me a dropdown textbox hybrid
>   widget for the new composer name. This seems odd -- I would pretty
>   much never want to select the name of a previous composer window as
>   the basis for my new one, would I? If you want a list of existing
>   composers for some reason, give me a list widget above the textbox
>   for the new composer.


This is the name of the composer not picking an existing one. Ideally, we
didn't want this to be a
popup dialog there was a code reason it had to be that way at that stage
and hasn't been changed since.

ACTUAL FUNCTIONALITY:

> % Because of a longstanding bug/wart, Excel for Mac (at least my
>   version) exports CSV files with CR (Ctrl-M, \015) as a line
>   delimeter, rather than CR or CRLF. This was the classic Macintosh
>   line delimeter back in the days of yore, which somehow survived the
>   transition to OS X, but only in some rare cases. The result is if
>   you save as Tab Delimited Text, you get a TSV with Ctrl-M.
>   (There are some workarounds, of course...)
> * Add Delmited Text Layer will not properly recognize a CR-delimited
>   TSV. This is annoying. It should, because of the history of such
>   files under OS X, and because it's still unfortunately way too easy
>   to create them.
> . I imagine that this is an ogr2ogr issue?


No this is a Qt issue not like CR, and MS for stuffing up Excel and never
fixing it.
There is a ticket for this.  It's annoying I know but I suspect we have to
make our own text file reader that
handles it correctly.

> * But QGIS has such a *nice* UI for importing CSV files, it seems
>   bizarre that it does not give you a UI to specify the field types
>   and manipulate a CSVT sidecar file. #wishlist


Add Delimited Text is generally the better way to import CSV files, it's
smarter and under our direct control.
I'm aware of the fact that QGIS uses ogr for csv and sometimes it uses Add
Delimited Text. I would like to see us just use
our method going forward to avoid the whole CVST mess.
>
>
> % Next, I wanted to import some data from my local MySQL server. But
>   unfortunately:


> * QGIS doesn't seem to have built-in MySQL support, even though the
>   documentation suggsested otherwise?


We default to ogr for this. I see you know this my the next comment. Best
to talk to GDAL devs about this
who build on OS X

> * QGIS doesn't have native support for line callouts. It seems like a
>   serious omission. It looks like there are a number of really awkward
>   workarounds involving creating spatial fields (lines, polygons) in
>   the shape of the line callout, and then plotting layers with those.
>   That seems...really convoluted and confusing and not user friendly.
>   I also found some discussion of the EasyCustomLabelling plugin for
>   this, but it appeared trickier to use than I was up for at the time.
>
https://gisunchained.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/etiquetas-com-guias-em-qgis-e-postgis-labels-leading-lines-with-qgis-and-postgis/

  has some instructions.

Long standing issue that just needs funding and dev time. There is also a
QEP about it I think.

MISC ISSUES:

> * QGIS logs to Console.app with some regularity:
>   You're not supposed to call gestaltSystemVersion() anymore, for many
>   years. Looks like it's Qt's fault though?


Yes Qt4 thing. Might be fixed in Qt5.

* DOCUMENTATION ISSUES:

> * I'm probaly being hypersensitive, but I found this text in
>   preamble/conventions.rst to be, well, kinda offensive:
> Larger amounts of text may be formatted as a list:
> |nix| Do this
> |win| Do that
> |osx| Do something else
>   It can be read to imply that everybody should use Linux ("Do this")
>   or Windows ("Do that") but not MacOS ("Do someting else"). I realize
>   it wasn't meant that way,  but it should probably be reworded ("Or,
>   do this.")


Please remember that docs are heavly written by volunteers, normally out of
work hours, and sometimes non native english speaking.
There is never any bad blood between each OS. It's simply just someone
getting notes down.

> * Through the manual, settings are accessed via "Settings". But under
>   OS X, you get there with QGIS > Preferences...


Qt moves these on us. However I was planning on maybe bringing a single
QGIS menu for all platforms
to stop this kind of stuff.

I'm not going to comment on any of the rest of the points as they need to
be raised with documentation team
to be addressed.  Fixing docs is super easy so they are always open for
people helping.


QUESTIONS:

* It appears from the manual in Section 16.1.2 that a Master Password
  -protected authentication system will just erase your authentication
  database after 3 wrong attempts if you just hit RETURN, by DEFAULT?
  That seems horribly unfriendly to the user, for no gain in security.

You will need to talk to Larry at Boundless about that as they build that
feature.

* Why does QGIS use Transparency sliders instead of Opacity sliders?
  Isn't Opacity much more common in graphics software?

History I suspect. If we change a string it breaks the translations so we
don't tend to change heaps of words unless
there is a major version change. 3.0 is a good time for this kind of change.

* How come the 2.5 D Renderer doesn’t show up in my layer styling
  Symbology dropdown? Is it not supported under OS X?

Polygons only. Should work on all platforms.

BUGS:
>
>
> * If I cycle through the all the UI preference choices in Preferenecs:
>   Style (Windows, Motif, ..., Aqua), quitting-and-restarting each
>   time, the result often is a seemingly corrupt QGIS setup that is
>   more prone to crashing and confused behavior. I'm not sure exactly
>   what goes wrong here, but this UI stuff seems...fragile.


Might be a Qt OSX thing?
>
>
> % What's the right way to deal with crashes and backtraces? Do the
>   QGIS developers want to see stack traces? Are there debugging
>   symbols available? Or should I try to reproduce crashes in the
>   current git checkout and analyze them myself?


There might be symbols for OS X but you will have to check. If you want
reproduce in a dev build
that is normally the faster way but if you can get a stack trace is that
also good.

END

--------------

Most of this is good feedback, but as I said in the comments some of it
because of history, lack of time, etc that they are
the way they are.  We are very welcome to changes however also be prepared
for things not always being able to be changed for many different
reasons. Having said that, any changes that bring a better experience are
normally always welcome and UI/UX changes are normally good.

QGIS 3.0 is a good time to make major changes if you want. There is a build
process for getting 3.0 building on OS X so maybe that is a good start
if you are able to build and work on QGIS yourself.  I suspect once you
learn the code base some of these are easy to take on and might be a good
way
to contribute.

Best course of action is to turn them into actionable tickets so they can
be worked on. If you have the skills and time to fix some yourself even
better.

Regards,
Nathan
http://nathanw.net
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